This webinar showcased innovative, farm-scale agroforestry systems can transform underutilised European landscapes into productive hubs for the bioeconomy. By integrating woody crops like poplar and Siberian elm with resilient annual industrial crops such as hemp, safflower, and crambe, the MIDAS project is validating farming systems that can increase crops resilience to challenging soil and environmental conditions while producing feedstock for bio-based products.
The webinar attracted over 80 participants, it was a deep dive into MIDAS demo sites across diverse climatic zones in Europe, with insightsinto the preliminary results of these systems, focusing on their capacity to strengthen ecosystem services—such as soil erosion mitigation and biodiversity enhancement—while ensuring economic viability and climate resilience for European farmers
Agenda and slides
Introduction
Maurizio Cocchi – Etaflorence
Efthymia Alexopoulou, CRES
Integration of short-rotation poplar and oil crops in Italy for biomass and bio-based products
Simone Bergonzoli – CREA-IT
Agroforestry trials using Siberian elm and lavender alongside annual rotating crops in North Spain
Luis Saul Esteban – CIEMAT
Synergies between biomass poplar and perennial grass mixtures for bioeconomy in Poland
Mateusz Ciasnocha – European Carbon Farmers
Integrating poplar and miscanthus with fibre and oilseed crops in Hungary
Zoltan Hajdu – Soltub
Scaling up agroforestry for regenerative agriculture and the bioeconomy
Constantin Muraru – European Agroforestry Federation
Watch the webinar recording
