Kontext

Nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium are essential nutrients for agriculture and food security. However, their excessive and inefficient use leads to significant environmental impacts across Europe, including pollution of air, soil and water, biodiversity loss, and contributions to climate change. Addressing these challenges is central to several EU policy frameworks.

The European Green Deal sets the ambition of making Europe climate-neutral by 2050. Within this framework, the Farm to Fork Strategy aims to reduce nutrient losses by at least 50% by 2030, while maintaining soil fertility and cutting fertiliser use by at least 20%. Complementing this, the EU Soil Strategy under the Biodiversity Strategy highlights the need to protect soil fertility, reduce erosion, and increase soil organic matter through sustainable soil management. In parallel, the Zero Pollution Action Plan calls on Member States to reduce ammonia emissions from agriculture, a major source of air pollution.

Agriculture also plays a key role in achieving a climate-neutral economy. Through carbon farming, carbon removals in terrestrial ecosystems can contribute to climate mitigation while improving soil fertility, biodiversity, ecosystem services, and farm resilience. To support more efficient nutrient use and meet Farm to Fork targets, the European Commission is introducing the Integrated Nutrient Management Action Plan, aligned with the new CAP green architecture. This includes tools such as Nutrient Management Plans and digital solutions like the Farm Sustainability Tool (FaST).

Precision farming practices, bio-based fertilisers based on circular economy principles, and agronomic techniques such as cover crops, alternative crops and optimized timing of applications all contribute to reducing nutrient losses while maintaining soil quality. Advisors play a critical role in supporting farmers to apply these approaches effectively, particularly in a context of high fertiliser prices and supply instability.

Objectives

The overarching aim of STRATUS is to connect advisors across Europe for accelerating knowledge creation and sharing on Integrated Fertilization Management, supporting farmers to bring this knowledge into practice to achieve the ambition of the Farm to Fork and Biodiversity Strategies, thus reducing nutrient losses to the environment while maintaining soil fertility. Through implementing a Multi-Actor (MA) approach, and with the majority of project partners being farm advisors and associations with solid field experience, STRATUS will create an advisors’ network reaching out to all EU27 countries during the 5 year duration of the project, thus mobilizing the EU-wide agricultural advisory community while implementing measures for their effective integration in the respective national/regional AKIS. 

STRATUS will thus support the transition to more sustainable nutrient management by ensuring that farm advisors have access to innovative solutions for optimising fertiliser use, reducing farmers' dependency on mineral fertilisers while ensuring yields.

Activities

To achieve it´s goals STRATUS organizes its activities into 4 technichal work packages (WP):

WP1 - Network creation and sustainability: The goal of WP1 is to create an EU-wide advisory network that is integrated into the 27 EU AKIS (agricultural knowledge and innovation system) to accelerate the adoption of effective and novel practices for optimal fertiliser use across Europe. WP1 will: