Activities

Projects

Title: ‘SAFE’ – Sustainable Water Reuse Practices Improving Safety in Agriculture, Food and Environment
Date: June 01, 2022 - May 30, 2024
Location: Italy, Greece, Spain, France, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Lebanon
Donor: PRIMA Foundation
Budget: €2,090,150 EURO

This project “Sustainable Water Reuse Practices Improving Safety in Agriculture, Food and Environment” (SAFE) focuses on providing safe, locally sustainable and accepted ways of water supply for the Mediterranean agricultural sector by exploiting non-conventional water resources, namely treated wastewater and improved methods to support agriculture.

SAFE mainly seeks to develop and improve tools to increase yields through good quality of water for irrigation, soil and pest management, access to better quality of salinity resistance plants, and improved agricultural practices

In addition, it will support Smallholder farmers who are globally the main producer of food and provides from 60 to 80 percent of the food produced in Mediterranean countries. Due to the increase of the world population, these farmers are under growing pressure to enhance their productivity and ensure food security and safety, especially for rural poor. Climate change is one of the most defining concerns of today’s world and has greatly reshaped or in process of altering earth’s ecosystems. Altogether, the impact of climate change is very comprehensive but its far reaching effects are now clearly visible on agricultural sector, on which relies the food production and economy of the world.

It’s a two-year project targeting the PRIMA programme Up-scaling field practices based on agro ecological practices to increase ecosystem services and biodiversity, to adapt the small farming systems to climate change and to increase farmers’ incomes and is closely aligned with the call. The objectives of the project seek to adapt smart agricultural practice to increase local crop yields.

Moreover, this project brings together a multidisciplinary panel of partners including agronomist, analytical chemists, chemical engineering, economist and smallholder farmers to increase the knowledge in water reuse and quality, crop adaptation and agriculture practice in order to investigate the applicability of specific tools under environmental and real conditions

SAFE project will investigate the problem of water reuse in agriculture, its direct and indirect effects in crop yields. In fact, to achieve the objectives, SAFE will deploy a variety of wastewater treatments, multidisciplinary methodologies and tools.

In line with the PRIMA and EU Farm-to-Fork strategy, SAFE will tackle innovation capacities, increase the state of knowledge and develop innovative solutions for sustainable management of agro-food systems, and integrated water provision in the Mediterranean area.

The consortium is composed in an interdisciplinary and international way and consists of twelve partners from eight countries, including four from Europe (Université de Montpellier (UM) - France, The Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA) – Spain, Hellenic Agricultural Organization (ELGO-Dimitra) Institute of Plant Breeding and Genetic Resources (IPBGR) – Greece and Università degli Studi della Basilicata (UNIBAS) – Italy, Sapienza Università di Roma (SAPIENZA) – Italy, Istituto Ricerca Sulle Acque - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche- (IRSA-CNR) – Italy, and four from non-European countries distributed across the south and east Mediterranean basin (Université Djillali Liabes (UDL) - Algeria, Water Researches and Technologies Center (CERTE) - Tunisia, Faculté des Sciences de Sfax (FSS) – Tunisia, Institut Agronomique et Vétérinaire Hassan II (IVA Rabat) - Morocco and Lebanese Development Network (LDN) - Lebanon).