Analysing Fossil-energy Dependence in Agriculture to Increase Resilience Against Input Price Fluctuations

In supporting the implementation of the European Green Deal, in particular the European Climate Law, the farm to fork strategy and the common agricultural policy, R&I is expected to support agriculture pathways towards reduced greenhouse gas emissions and better use of inputs, while improving the incomes of primary producers. Relevant inputs include in particular fossil fuels and fertilisers produced from non-renewable resources. The topic will contribute to the Destination’s expected impact of “foster[ing] climate change mitigation in the primary sectors, including by the reduction of their GHG emissions and other pollutants”.

Successful proposals are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Better analytical tools and capacity to integrate the use of fossil energy and energy-intensive inputs in modelling and in socio-economic analysis more broadly;
• Improved decision-making by farmers in relation to the consumption of energy and energy-intensive inputs, in particular mineral fertilisers;
• Better capacity of the farming sector to cope with variations in the price of energy and energy-intensive inputs;
• Direct and indirect dependence of the sector on hydrocarbons is reduced.

Proposals should:

• Use foresight methods to elaborate scenarios of fossil energy and mineral fertiliser use evolution and dependence. Where available, reference scenarios of the European Commission (DG ENER) should be used to advance the state of the art;
• Improve the capacity of models to take into account direct and indirect energy uses and prices;
• Cover both macro and micro levels in the analysis. At the micro-economic level linkages should be established with the Farm Sustainability Data Network (FSDN) under development by the European Commission;
• Develop tools to support farmers’ decision-making for optimal use of energy and mineral fertiliser, to improve economic, environmental and climate performance of farming systems.

This topic should involve the effective contribution of SSH disciplines.

Projects shall leverage the data and services available through European Research Infrastructures federated under the European Open Science Cloud, as well as data from relevant Data Spaces in the data-driven analyses.

The possible participation of the JRC in the project would ensure that the approach proposed is compatible with and improves the tools used at the European Commission.