Following a meeting last October 2012 in the Basque Country with Fenny van Egmond and Ronald Koomans from the MEDUSA company (participating on the LIFE Project Better Crops for Soil), in their trip back to Holland, this time we have met in the centre of Neiker in Bizkaia with Egbert Sonneveld. Egbert is active in three LIFE Projects and we discussed specifically actions being carried out in the project already mentioned, as in a recently started LIFE+ project, Operation CO2. Ana Aizpurua, Gerardo Besga, Oscar del Hierro, Olatz Unamunzaga and Iker Mijangos attended the meeting in Neiker’s side as participants in the Interreg IV B SUDOE (ADAPTACLIMA II), LIFE+ Projects AGROLCAManager, sigAGROasesor and SOILMONTANA.

Ana Aizpurua made a quick overview of the objectives and projects being carried out at the Department of Environmental Quality of Neiker to provide a background information in order to discuss in more details activities at the LIFE+ projects.

We have many points in common in the work being carried out for the LIFE projects, in particular, soil health cards and soil enzymatic and microbiological indicators being developed in the SOILMontana project fit very well with the objectives of characterizing the effect on soil properties of the introduction of traditional crops and cropping techniques in the dry regions of Spain.

Also, the LIFE Cycle Thinking approach to agricultural systems and the consequential development of knowledge, technologies and tools to characterize agricultural systems, develop sustainability indicators and transfer best agricultural techniques to the farmers fit very well with the approach followed in the Operation CO2 project.

Next week we will have another meeting with Fenny van Egmond at INTIA (Villava, Navarra, Spain), as leaders in the sigAGROasesor project, to further discuss the approaches followed to characterize soil properties at the Crops for Better Soil and sigAGROasesor.

We expect to benefit from this continue exchange of information and technologies, as well as to provide better tools and results for the farmers involved in the projects, with the final objective of the improvement of the environmental performance of their agricultural practices.