Pre-Announcement of EJP SOIL Second External Call – EJP SOIL International Call

This call will be open April 2022 with a closing date for proposals in September 2022

The European Joint Programme “EJP SOIL - Towards climate-smart sustainable management of agricultural soils” comprise 24 countries committed to the overall goal of providing sustainable agricultural soil management solutions that contribute to key societal challenges including climate change and future food supply.

Please note, that details presented in this pre-announcement may be subject to change before the launch of this call in April 2022 on https://ejpsoil.eu/.

Rationale & Aim of the call

The objective of this call is to foster farm management practices, which contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation. To achieve this aim, proposals submitted to this Call must address one of the following three topics:.

Topic a: Soil restoration practices and managements for alleviating land degradation and supporting the agro-ecosystem functioning

The research proposals should focus on restoring degraded soils in agricultural and forest lands as well as assessing the potential of available solutions, such as nature-based solutions, technological options and their combinations.

Topic b: Options to manage C, N and P cycling in the context of changing environmental conditions using data derived from benchmark farms

The research proposals should aim at identifying a set of relevant and representative benchmark farms that engage and execute a pre-defined and agreed long-term strategy using practices and measures in full farm management targeting inter alia enhanced soil carbon sequestration and reduced CO₂ and non-CO₂ emissions of greenhouse gases. This also includes considerations how changes in temperature and rainfall intensity and patterns may impact the C, N and P cycling.

Topic c: Developing innovative methods and sensing technologies to provide an integrated monitoring and mapping of farm management practices taking also into account physical attributes and vegetation characteristics relevant to SOC sequestration, soil health and degradation.

Research proposals should focus on developing, testing and validating new remote and / or proximal sensing approaches to provide mapping and monitoring of farm management practices as well as physical attributes relevant to SOC sequestration, soil health and degradation.

Who can apply

Universities and other higher education institutions, public research institutions, private non-profit organisations, and private companies as well as employees of these organisations can apply for funding, subject to individual Funders’ regulations and respective individual eligibility criteria (see separate document “Funders’ regulations”). Research consortia should consist of a minimum of three eligible partners from three different countries seeking funding from at least three different Funders who contribute funds to the Call. The Funder from which they sought funding, according to their legal terms and conditions for project funding will provide funding of the participating research partners.

A provisional list of partner countries and funding organisations is given below – the funding organisation names and applicable regulations of each Funder will be published with the Call Announcement in April 2022.

Partnering Tool

In addition, a partnering tool is attached to the submission platform, where project partnerships can be offered or searched for. The partnering tool is already available under the following the link (https://ejp-soil.ptj.de/index.php?index=65).

Provisional list of countries intending to participate in the EJP SOIL International Call

Please note that the information within this table is provisional. Final confirmation of participating countries will be announced within the call documents available upon call launch in April 2022.

Indicative Timeline

The EJP SOIL International Call will follow a one-step-procedure, but a pre-registration of the proposal is mandatory for submission of proposals. A time schedule is provided below (tentative).

A webinar will be organised on the 24^th May for all interested applicants.

Content of the webinar will be an overview about all relevant aspects for the Call and will give a short introduction for the submission tool. A link to the webinar will be provided within due time on this website and on our submission website (https://ejp-soil.ptj.de/call2)

Call Office contacts

The call office will be operated by Projectmanagement Jülich (Germany):

NAME:                   Ulrike Ziegler                            Christian Breuer

Phone:                    +49 2461 61 55 66                       +49 2461 61 96 929

E-mail:                   u.ziegler@fz-juelich.de                  c.breuer@fz-juelich.de

The EJP SOIL programme has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 862695