Erosa has been funded by the EU's Horizon 2020 program to enhance sustainable agricultural practices and food systems efficiency globally. The project emphasizes engaging smallholder farmers in China to adopt improved management practices through collaboration among researchers and extension agents, addressing issues like nitrogen over-application. The initiative aims to balance high yield with reduced environmental impact, highlighting the need for radical transparency and interoperability in agricultural systems.

1. eROSA has received funding from the European
Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation
programme under grant agreement No 730988
VISION 2030 and Roadmap
Presentation to CAAS, AII, Beijing 2018, September 5
Johannes Keizer, for the eROSA team

2. Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme - grant agreement No 730988
EOSC Stakeholder Meeting Brussels– 2017-11-28
eROSA in brief

6. European open science cloud (EOSC)
From Jean Claude Burgelman – DG RTD
Agricultural sciences

7. Agriculture – back into the
center of interest

8. • healthy and delicious food for all (feeding 9
billion!)
• based on environmentally (climate change)
• and socially sustainable agriculture (fighting
rural poverty!)
• and food production (healthy nutrition)

9. it cannot be about
agriculture and food
it needs to be about Food
Systems

10. Efficiency needs to be
accounted for in terms of
Quality and sustainability,
efficiency in mass
production has still its
role, though

11. The vision cannot be
European - it has to be
global

12. Radical Transparency!
science is not limited to
Universities and Research
Institutes, but includes
farmers, industry, supply
chain and citizens

13. • Big data in Omics
• Artificial intelligence
• Robotics
• Precision agriculture for
sustainability

14. Internet of Things
Communities
Trust
And again: radical transparency

15. Main vision for roadmaps:
• Fairization of back ends, but no technology
dictate
• Improvements of front ends, but no
homogenization and limitations
• Working in the middle for interoperability
• Common semantics of prime importance

18. Learning from China

19. China is a case in point. With 200–300 million households that each
farm a few hectares of land, the agricultural system relies heavily on
high-to-excessive inputs. For example, nitrogen application
averages to 305 kg N ha−1 yr−1 compared to 74 kg N ha−1 yr−1
worldwide16; nitrogen use efficiency (the fraction of nitrogen input
harvested as product) is only 0.25 compared to 0.42 worldwide and
0.65 in North America17. Over-application of nitrogen has caused
widespread soil acidification18, devastating water pollution19 and
excessive greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions20. For a sustainable
food-secure future, China needs a ‘great balancing act’21 to
attain high yield and high efficiency with a substantially reduced
environmental footprint. This cannot be achieved without the vast
smallholder-farming communities

20. Here we report the outcome of concerted efforts in engaging
millions of Chinese smallholder farmers to adopt enhanced
management practices for greater yield and environmental
performance. First, we conducted field trials across China’s
major agroecological zones to develop locally applicable
recommendations using a comprehensive decision support
program. Engaging farmers to adopt those recommendations
involved the collaboration of a core network of 1,152
researchers with numerous extension agents and agribusiness
personnel. From 2005 to 2015, about 20.9 million farmers in
452 counties adopted enhanced management practices in
fields

21. eROSA has received funding from the European
Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation
programme under grant agreement No 730988
Big and open Data
…is the basis of the research which is described in the Nature letter.
We need to serve the scientists with better data storage, access and
management

22. CONSORTIUM
WWW.EROSA.AGINFRA.EU
eROSA will develop further to serve the
international community and seeks for
collaboration