The NBSOIL Project’s first in-person and hybrid meeting took place in Puławy, Poland, on February 28 and March 1 of 2023. The sixteen project partners of NBSOIL gathered for the first time in an on-site meeting to coordinate and plan the activities for the following months. The meeting took place in Poland at the premises of the Institute of Soil Science and Plant Cultivation (IUNG), the NBSOIL Project coordinator.
The purpose of the meeting in Puławywas to provide information on the project’s overall objectives, crucial components, and implementation to the partner organizations that were directly involved. NBSOIL will create and test a learning pathway for existing and aspiring soil advisors, designing an attractive blended learning programme. The Soil Academy will train the new wave of soil advisors providing them with the skills and information they need to develop a holistic and nature-based solutions approach to soil management.
During the meeting in Puławy, the partners also laid the foundation for the NBSOIL knowledge base. The project will gather existing knowledge regarding nature-based solutions (NBS) for soils and how these can be beneficial for society. The knowledge base will showcase a portfolio of NBS for soil health addressing the EU Mission Soil objectives. As Grzegorz Siebielec, NBSOIL Project Coordinator, highlighted in the project online kick off meeting in December, “we must integrate an NBS approach throughout the project activities and emphasise the importance of soil monitoring and soil literacy”.
The NBSOIL project consortium is integrated by the Institute of Soil Science and Plant Cultivation (IUNG), Agricultural Advisory Centre in Brwinowie (CDR) and the Institute of Aviation Lukasiewicz (ILOT), from Poland; the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), Chamber of Agriculture and Forestry in Styria (CAFS) and Alchemia Nova, from Austria; Soil Association, from the United Kingdom; the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3), Agrisat, REVOLVE and Instituto Técnico Agronómico Provincial (ITAP), from Spain; Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), from Switzerland; the Centre National d’Agroécologie (CNA), from France; the University of Torino, from Italy; and AERES University of Applied Sciences, from the Netherlands. All project partners are European organisations working to lead the transition towards healthy soils by 2030.
