Experts take on the CropBooster-P strategies for future proofing Europe’s food & agriculture sector

The key themes that emerged from our discussions with farmers, policy makers, consumers and agri-business regarding the CropBooster strategies are shown in the figure.

Our stakeholders felt that climate change posed the greatest challenge to the food and agriculture sector while consumer acceptance and regulation of biotechnology would be the main challenges for adoption of the CropBooster strategies. They raised concerns regarding the knock-on effects associated with the CropBooster strategies such as increasing size of harvest parts and alter the growing and need for considering them for every option. They also questioned whether the aims of particular CropBooster options were best met through crop improvement or some other type of intervention. Additionally, they suggested that strategies aligned towards to the food system such as changing towards healthier diets, sustainable consumption and smart agricultural farming could be better alternatives to improving the efficiency of the plant alone. Finally, they mentioned that the CropBooster strategies should be tailor-made to meet local needs due to the geographical variations in impacts.

Acknowledgements

These expert workshops were facilitated by Lancaster and Wageningen Universities as a part of Work Package 2 of the CropBooster-P progamme. We would like to thank all those participated in our online workshops and focus groups.