The EU-Horizon2020-project TRUE is a 24 partner consortium covering business and society actors from legume commodity production, processing, and citizens from eleven countries across Europe plus Kenya. They are clustered in the Atlantic, Continental and Mediterranean region. TRUE is underpinned by science excellence in the natural and social sciences, and humanities. The main aim of TRUE is to identify and enable transition paths to realise successful legume-supported production systems and agri-feed and -food chains. This is achieved via: a true multi-actor approach that balances environmental, economic- and social-securities by minimising environmental impact; optimising diversity and resilience in commercial and environmental terms throughout the supply chain; and delivery of excellent nutrition to ensure the highest possible states of health and wellbeing for people and animals.
TRUE will achieve this using a series of 24 Case Studies to characterise key mechanisms and associated ecosystem services indicators. This will empower the production of popular and novel legume-based products on the basis of improved market perspectives and capabilities, including short supply chains. Advanced mathematical approaches using Life Cycle Analysis, and socioeconomic and multi-attribute modelling will create unique Decision Support Tools to identify optimal transition paths to ensure legume supported systems are profitable from ‘the push’, of production, to ‘the pull’ of upstream supply chains, markets and consumers. Critically, the TRUE approach will also advise and empower policy amendments that promote uptake of new farming, processing, manufacturing and retailing practices, in line with the societal considerations of the Responsible Research and Innovation model: policy decision making with state-of-the-art science-based information.
The University of Hohenheim is involved with four institutions in three out of nine Work Packages (WP) and covers two of the 24 Case Studies: The Hohenheim Research Center for Global Food Security and Ecosystems (GFE) is leading WP1 (Knowledge exchange & Communication) by establishing and maintaining the virtual knowledge exchange and e-networking, implementation of the Regional Clusters by involving relevant stakeholders and communicate with policy makers, creating scientific and practice-oriented publications. The GFE is also administrating the participation of the Hohenheim institutions. The Institute of Rural Sociology is supporting WP1 with capacity building in transdisciplinary methods and tools. Institute of Crop Science and the Coordination for Organic Farming and Consumer Protection contribute to WP2 (Case Studies) by leading the Case Studies 13 on lentils (Albleisa) and Case Study 14 on soybean production with the aim of evaluating the stories of success. The Institute of Farm Management contributes to WP 6 (Economics) with a spatial statistical analysis of legume cultivation in the EU, considering eco-economic farm modelling and the analysis of risk related aspects.
Link to the TRUE Project-Homepage
