Contexte

In many food cultures, legumes have historically provided the main source of dietary protein or serve as a necessary supplement to other complementary protein sources, for humans and farmed animals. Across Europe the production and consumption of legumes and legume-based products has been low but is now increasing, though whether these foods are derived from ‘home-grown’ legumes (i.e., cultivated within the EU) is much less-likely. Hence, the potential environmental and economic benefits of legumes are not necessarily being realized ‘at home’. It is, therefore, important that plant-based foods and feeds are delivered by legumes which are home-grown, since high import dependency means the multi-environmental and socio-economic benefits of legumes are forfeited. It is also important to note that as legumes are underutilized crops across Europe, the best-agronomic practices for legumes are not always carried out, and this leads to limited yields, and lower yield stability compared to cereals. Hence, where legume agronomy can be optimized, this can cascade to other following crops in the system, through soil fertility and function, and quality benefits, allowing the potential of diversified legume-based cropping systems to be fully realized.

While the potential multifunctional Ecosystem Services benefits of legumes are well known and complex, realizing these in practice has proven difficult. Yet, these benefits are well positioned to address the three existential crisis facing humanity: climate change, biodiversity loss, and nutritional provision. Hence, Ecosystem Services monitoring is critical, though challenging, and requires that there is strict definition of the Ecosystem Services being monitored, and their underpinning Ecosystem Services indicators. In addition, monitoring approaches must be robust and flexible to ensure uptake and application of Ecosystem Services indicators monitoring across scales both spatial and temporal. 

Objectives

The overall aim of legumES is to share, showcase, co-develop, and implement the knowledge, key agronomic practices, methodologies, and tools which will allow optimized legume-based systems, and valorisation of the ecosystem services benefits provided. Hence, the project will ensure: 1, the uptake of best practices in agrobiodiverse legume-based cropped systems; 2, the uptake of methodologies and tools to quantify and balance the environmental and economic ecosystem service benefits provided by legumes; 3, that the Ecosystem Services benefits and cost offered by legumes are quantified across scales from field, farm, regional, national, and global levels; and 4, Ecosystem Services will be assessed to identify those conditions which are able to meet the EU targets: to decrease agrichemical inputs and losses, combat climate change, reverse biodiversity loss, and ensure the best nutritional provisioning.

Activities

LegumES propose a set of strategic and fully inclusive multi-actor driven solutions, supported by the delivery of practical methodologies, and tools to help inform how legumes and legume-based crop systems should be deployed and monitored to realize diversified legume-based cropping systems in the EU and Associated countries. Our state-of-the-art framework will also account how the environmental benefits of legume- based crop production may be best-balanced with the economic consequences of alternative land use scenarios. LegumES will therefore also diversify legume research to include crops, ecosystem services, contexts, and scales not yet well studied, to provide the agroecological knowledge-base farmers need to amplify their potential benefits. 

The legumES approach is founded on the implementation of ‘Action-Research’ and Ecosystem Services-Design’ Frameworks. This multi-actor approach aims to balance and harmonize across scales the ES benefits offered by legume-based food- and feed-systems. Initially, the multi-actor approach will provide an overview of current system design and an overall socio-economic and pedoclimatic situation analysis, as informed by evidence and reviews. This will also provide insight into the opportunities and barriers for the methods and tools to be used in Ecosystem Services, and underpinning ecosystem service indicator accounting. Collectively, this will provide a framework for system valorization, and for system components in isolation and in combinations. The Outcomes Framework will comprise ‘Route Maps’ which define how best Ecosystem Services monitoring and evaluation may be mainstreamed; that is, identifying the specific activities, scenarios and facilitating agents which are necessary to realize optimized legume-based systems in practice, and regular monitoring of the Ecosystem Services benefits they provide. 

More specifically, LegumES brings together existing knowledge, methodologies, tools, historic data, and wider stakeholder fora to establish a robust and practical framework to monitor and valorize the Ecosystem Services provided by legumes.  WP1 and WP2 are built on a MAA foundation to facilitate co-learning and co-creation through multiactor engagement and capacity building for increased legume cultivation, processing, and consumption. WP3-5 are built on the concept of the three pillars of sustainability, which are: ‘economics’, ‘social structure’ and ‘environment’. These will conduct an environmental, economic, and policy assessment of legume-based cropped systems. Allied these 2 concepts will allow the creation and development of new methodologies and tools (WP6) to support the quantification of legumes ES through.