Pioneer Centre - Land-CRAFT Center for Landscape Research in Sustainable Agricultural Futures

Agriculture is a major driver of global environmental deterioration and a source of greenhouse gases
(GHGs), but it is also severely at risk from changes in climate due to higher temperatures, droughts
and more extreme weather events. At the same time, the global needs for agricultural products
(food, materials and energy) is accelerating. The agricultural sector needs transformative change to
meet the challenge of feeding the world’s growing population through climate-resilient food systems
with low GHG emissions and reduced environmental nutrient losses and associated pollution, while
at the same time restoring the health of ecosystems on agricultural land, and, as far as possible,
keeping natural land unaffected by human activities.

The vision of Land-CRAFT is to:
1) conduct basic research that innovates our fundamental understanding of the dynamics and
interactions of GHG fluxes, nutrient flows, and ecosystem health across landscapes undergoing
transformative change in agricultural practices based on agroecological approaches;
2) identify landscape measures for climate-resilient and sustainable agricultural systems which
optimize production while creating desired environmental outcomes, including the reduction of
nutrient losses, the reduction of GHG emissions (aiming for climate neutrality at landscape scale),
and the preservation of biodiversity;
3) develop tools to promote effective mitigation and adaptation strategies, i.e. tools that monitor,
report, and verify (MRV) different strategies to adapt agricultural production to changing (socio-)
environmental conditions, while mitigating GHG emissions, restoring ecosystem health, and
maintaining / increasing agricultural productivity.