STRATUS project Kick-Off meeting
Iniciativas Innovadoras has met in Pamplona with the entities participating in the launch of the project
The region of Navarra has recently hosted the launch of the STRATUS project, coordinated by the public company INTIA and in which Iniciativas Innovadoras participates as a partner. STRATUS, a project approved and financed by HORIZONTE EUROPA, the most important Research and Innovation programme of the European Union, aims to create a technical advisory network on the optimal use of fertilisers. Eighteen entities from 11 European countries are participating in this project, which has a duration of five years and a total budget of almost four million euros.
The STRATUS project aims to connect advisory bodies across Europe to accelerate the creation and sharing of knowledge on Integrated Fertilisation Management, helping the agricultural sector to put this knowledge into practice in order to achieve the objectives of the Farm to Fork and Biodiversity Strategies, thereby reducing nutrient losses to the environment and maintaining soil fertility. The network will be composed of three sub-networks: one on precision agriculture, one on organic fertilisers and one on soil quality.
By applying a multi-stakeholder approach and with most of the partners being agricultural advisory bodies with strong expertise in different areas of fertilisation, STRATUS will create an advisory network reaching out to all EU countries, mobilising advisory services across the EU through measures for their effective integration into the respective national/regional Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS).
STRATUS will support the transition to more sustainable nutrient management by ensuring access to innovative solutions that optimise fertiliser use, reducing reliance on mineral fertilisers while guaranteeing yields.
This new knowledge will result in 60 demonstrations, training material and visits with the participation of actors from all Member States. In addition, a digital platform will be created to collect all the information, interoperable with other advisory platforms and EU-FarmBook.
Iniciativas Innovadoras has a dual role in the project. On the one hand, it will provide administrative and financial management support to the coordinating entity in order to guarantee a correct implementation of the project. On the other hand, it will lead the communication, dissemination and exploitation of results, to ensure that the knowledge generated reaches all the project's stakeholders, among which, in addition to the European Union's advisory services, there are also producers (agriculture, livestock), academia and political representatives and authorities.
In Navarra, the partner organisations were able to learn about the organic fertilisation trials being carried out at the INTIA experimental farm, a farm specialising in horticultural-fruit crops, where different initiatives and strategies were also presented.
The rest of the 2-day programme was devoted entirely to workshops in which the project partners, more than 30 people from different European countries such as Sweden, Latvia, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Greece, Italy, Poland, Slovenia and Croatia, were able to get to know each other, share their expectations, present the first activities and define the action plan for the first year of the project through participatory methodologies.
Stratus started on 1 February and the website will be up and running in May. Until then, news about events and other project activities can be followed on the project's social media channels.
Pamplona, February 2024.