This project is funded by European Union.

Water FARMING goal is to enhance the water and nutrient retention capacity and improve use efficiency (Challenge 1) in diverse arable production systems across Europe and North (N) Africa, to reduce soil and water pollution (Challenge 2) for sustainable management of water resources (Challenge 3).

The specific objectives are to: i) quantify the potential to enhance retention and use efficiency of water and nutrients at field, farm and catchment scale through water and soil conserving practices in a selected network of production systems; ii) develop environmental, economic and social indicators to evaluate the production systems; iii) design innovative practices and sustainable water and nutrient use production systems and iv) develop a web-based decision support tool for informed-decision making by farmers, advisory services and policy-makers.

A number of 6 partners are collaborating in the project, representing multidisciplinary approach. The respective partnership includes UCPH (Denmark), UFZ (Germany), NARSS (Egypt), CNR (Italy), WU (Netherlands) and CERTE (Tunisia). Water FARMING will adopt an innovative case-study approach by bringing together a network of locally relevant production systems representative of the diverse pedo-climatic conditions and socio-economic settings in Europe and N. Africa. Key stakeholders (e.g. farmers, farmer networks and advisory services), will be actively involved from the start of the project to co-generate shared knowledge and information, from local to regional scales.

The expected outputs are i) a list of water and nutrient use efficiency gaps in relevant production systems, ii) a set of widely applicable environmental, economic and social indicators iii) innovative practices to improve the network of production systems and iv) a decision support tools for informed decision making by stakeholders.