Phosphorus (P) is a vital input for agricultural production. Yet, current agricultural practices are overexploiting and wasting the earth´s P reserves, which are needed to meet the food demand of a growing human population. Currently, there is a large flow of P from mineable P rock through agricultural production systems to surface waters, where eutrophication severely deteriorates ecosystems functioning. Hence, P is polluting the environment, while at the same time valuable P resources are lost. This is the global P challenge! A challenge of planetary dimensions with potentially dramatic consequences for humans. Through its circular Economy Action Plan, the EU provides the regulatory framework to develop an economy where the value of products, materials and resources is maintained for as long as possible. Important steps towards a circular P economy includes establishing new interdisciplinary partnerships for creating strategies towards radical restructuring of P governance and for developing novel, interdi

Imported mineral phosphate and fossil energy-intensive nitrogen fertilisers cause major detrimental impacts on the environment, whilst nutrient-rich side-streams/organic waste remain under-utilised. By optimising usage of bio-based fertilisers (BBF) from side-streams, ensuring their safety, building evidence-based trust in their usage and developing legislative framework for their use, it will be possible to reduce dependence upon mineral/fossil fertilisers, benefiting the environment and the EU’s economy. LEX4BIO aims to achieve this by collecting and processing regional nutrient stock, flow, surplus and deficiency data, and reviewing and assessing the required technological solutions. Furthermore, socioeconomic benefits and limitations to increase substitution of mineral fertiliser for BBFs will be analysed. A key result of LEX4BIO will be a universal, science-based toolkit for optimising the use of BBFs in agriculture and to assess their environmental impact in terms of non-renewable energy use, greenhouse gas emissions and other LCA impact categories. LEX4BIO provides for the first time connection between production technologies of BBFs and regional requirements for the safe use of BBFs. The large variation between EU regions in nutrient flows and regional requirements for fertilisers will be estimated by harmonised methods to produce the knowledge basis needed to set up feasible ways to redirect the nutrient flows where needed. This will be followed by classifying the best available technologies for producing regionally tailored BBFs to secure high agricultural productivity, as well as environmental protection, food safety and human health. In LEX4BIO, the knowledge basis and recommendations will be gathered and processed together with stakeholders across Europe, providing best solutions for decreasing the dependency on imported fertilisers, closing the nutrient cycles and improving sustainability of European farming systems.

Biowaste valorisation is an attractive approach in the framework of the EU Waste Management policies and the development of a circular economy. Waste from biostreams and different biobased sources are being under-utilised as potential resource of valuable compounds. Fertilisers play an important role as suppliers of nutrients relying on their production heavily on fossil mineral resources. European Fertiliser industry is besides very dependent on imports of these raw materials, being vulnerable to supply and pricing policies. Main objective of the proposal is to build up a breakthrough concept of Fertiliser Industry, strengthening European competitiveness and boosting the biobased economy potential, through the development of a new value chain, which will achieve turning solid and liquid residues, specifically ashes of different origins and livestock effluents, into high quality valuable products, a new generation of fertilisers. NEWFERT will focus on a viable and cost-effective industrial nutrient recycling scheme, developing new biorefining technologies aimed at increasing nutrient recovery ratios and mitigating environmental and socio-economical impact of the current fertilisers by replacing non renewable and fossil nutrients with biobased materials in their composition. Projected benefits also include substantial energy savings and CO2 emissions reduction. NEWFERT aims to decrease raw material dependency, prevent resource depletion and reduce the environmental impact increasing significantly the Fertiliser industry sustainability. The work organisation has been designed to link and pursue a successful industrial integration supported by a solid life-cycle cost analysis. The strategy of the work plan is based on 8 workpackages. NEWFERT consortium is lead by FERTIBERIA and composed by a balanced set of 6 partners from 4 European Union member countries: biobased industries, SMEs, RTOs and academic institutions covering nutrients recovery from biobased waste field.

Each year, a substantial amount of food loss (FL) is generated at the primary production stage; FL have negative impacts on the society, contributing to food insecurity, depleting the environment, generating avoidable GHG emissions and creating pressure on land and water. Currently, key challenges hampering the reduction of FL are: regulatory challenges (e.g., exclusion of FL in the EU Commission Decision 2019/1597), technical challenges (e.g., lack of common measurement methodology, lack of cost-effective measurement tools), scientific challenges (e.g., lack of understanding of drivers) and social challenges (e.g., lack of skills of the different stakeholders involved). FOLOU is willing to contribute in overcoming these challenges, being the main objective of the project to set up the necessary mechanisms to: (i) measure and estimate (robust and harmonized methodology), (ii) monitor and report (national and EU FL registries), and (iii) assess the magnitude and impact of FL. Additionally, FOLOU will also work to assure the appropriate knowledge transfer and adoption of the project outcomes by the key targeted stakeholders: primary producers, retailers, consumers, policy makers and researchers. FOLOU will structure its activities in a comprehensive action plan revolving around four levers of change: 1#Understanding by working on collecting and curing FL available data, by working on understanding the drivers behind food losses and by assessing the impact of these losses; 2#Measuring by developing new cost-effective tools for the measurement/estimation of FL and a robust and harmonized methodology; 3#Training by providing tailored trainings to different stakeholders; 4#Adopting by preparing recommendations and creating a twinning programme. With a duration of 4 years, FOLOU gathers 16 multidisciplinary partners from 10 countries joining forces around a common challenge: Preventing and reducing the amount of food intended for human consumption that is eventually lost.

In line with the Zero Pollution action plan and the Farm to Fork Strategy, Nutribudget will develop the prototype of a first-of-its-kind integrated nutrient management platform, called Nutriplatform, in various regions across Europe. The Nutriplatform will operate as a decision-support tool (DST) for farmers, advisors and regional authorities and before the end of the project this prototype (as a stand-alone or integrated in the existing EC promoted FaST tool for nutrient management) will be tested and used by at least 40.000 farmers across Europe. Firstly, the development of the Nutriplatform will be based on the algorithms of two advanced newly developed holistic Nutrimodels that quantify the impact of agronomic mitigation measures to optimize nutrient budget and flow across scales (from farm to Europe), across elements (C) and nutrients (N, P, K, S, Ca, Mg, Cu and Zn) and by looking at various agronomic and environmental targets. The measures will be derived from (I) existing knowledge, including input from relevant EU projects (e.g. the 4 on nutrient recycling from the call) and (II) new data from field experiments with innovative mitigation measures and combinations thereof that connect animal and crop production via agro-processing industries in 5 pilot regions (4 nutrient hotspot and 1 nutrient deficient area) in 4 different climate regions in Europe. Secondly, these measures will be linked to relevant monitoring indicators, called NutriKPIs, for agronomic performance in different farming systems, nutrient emissions and impact on biodiversity. All will be done in co-creation, according to a Nutri-actor approach, with a consortium of 17 partners from 10 countries that are all experts in their respective fields. Thereby, Nutribudget will contribute to systemically optimize nutrient management across different agricultural production systems and regions in the EU to reduce pollution due to the excessive use of nutrients and nutrient losses to the environment.