Transformation for sustainable nutrient supply and management

Project Information

trans4num

Grant agreement ID: 101081847

DOI

10.3030/101081847

EC signature date 10 October 2022

Start date 1 December 2022

End date 30 November 2026

Funded under

• Food, Bioeconomy Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment

Total cost

€ 5 034 396,25

EU contribution

€ 4 617 123,38

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITAET HOHENHEIM
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - trans4num (Transformation for sustainable nutrient supply and management)

Reporting period: 2024-06-01 to 2025-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

trans4num aspires to substantiate and broadly promote Nature-based solution (NBS) innovations for sustainable agriculture in Europe and China. In particular, trans4num focuses on nutrient management and will 1) develop a differentiated understanding of NBS potentials for achieving sustainable agricultural practices, 2) study the complexities of applying NBS, 3) develop a dynamic and smart nutrient management tool to support regional decision making for optimum nutrient supply, and 4) assess the (net) impact of technological and social innovations as well as policies related to NBS. To realize its objectives, trans4num uses a social-ecological transformation framework tailored to study 20 NBS farm level innovations in 7 regions with intensive farming systems. The project implements the multi-actor approach to consider various societal concerns and interests related to NBS in agricultural nutrient management and to identify promising transformation pathways for social innovations conducive to a wider acceptance and adoption of NBS. trans4num will bring together experience, expertise and knowledge across different fields, technologies and disciplines from Europe and China and apply a range of methods and formats to advance and foster NBS implementation prospects. Its outcomes are expected to contribute to the European Green Deal, Farm to Fork, and Zero Pollution ambition strategies as well as China’s policy: the 14th Five-Year Planning for Green Agriculture Development strategy.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the second reporting period, trans4num progressed from conceptual development and piloting towards integrated implementation, cross-scale analysis, and early synthesis of NBS for sustainable nutrient management. Activities across all work packages (WP1–WP6) were conducted in a coordinated and mutually reinforcing manner, ensuring alignment between empirical experimentation, socio-economic analysis, modelling, stakeholder engagement, and dissemination.
Key achievements include:
• Consolidation of the project’s conceptual and methodological framework for NBS transformation pathways (WP1), supported by updated guidance for stakeholder engagement and interdisciplinary integration.
• Continuation and expansion of long-term NBS field experiments across four European sites and multiple Chinese regions, generating harmonised evidence on soil health, nutrient cycling, productivity, and emissions (WP2).
• Development and pilot testing of a decision-support tool (DST) for nutrient management, informed by stakeholder feedback and tested in real-world contexts (WP3).
• Advancement of modelling frameworks, including pilot agent-based and food-system models, enabling exploration of adoption dynamics, trade-offs, and transition pathways across scales (WP4).
• Strengthened communication, dissemination, and stakeholder engagement, including policy briefs, practice abstracts, hackathons, and international events, enhancing uptake and visibility of project results (WP5).
• Effective project coordination and data governance, ensuring timely delivery, compliance with open science requirements, and smooth Europe-China collaboration (WP6).
RP2 marks a clear transition from exploratory work to integration, positioning the project for synthesis and impact delivery in the final reporting period.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

trans4num delivers advances beyond the state of the art by moving from isolated NBS practices to a systemic, transformation-oriented understanding of sustainable nutrient management. Key novelties include:
• Integration of biophysical, socio-economic, and behavioural perspectives to analyse NBS not only in terms of environmental performance, but also adoption dynamics, governance conditions, and equity implications.
• Empirical evidence from long-term experiments across Europe and China, enabling cross-regional comparison of NBS performance under contrasting agro-ecological, institutional, and socio-economic conditions.
• Setting up agent-based and food-system modelling to explore scaling pathways, policy scenarios, and feedbacks across farm, regional, and food-system levels.
• Development of a decision-support tool, bridging scientific knowledge and on-farm decision-making while explicitly addressing uncertainty, trade-offs, and context dependency.
These results extend existing NBS research by demonstrating how sustainable nutrient management can be operationalised as a socio-ecological transition, rather than a set of isolated technical fixes.