A new instrument for contributing to the soil science - policy interface: the EJP SOIL National Hubs

Driving effectively soil research towards practice and towards policy solutions requires that the involved stakeholders, i.e researchers, practitioners and both national and regional policy makers interact and share information and views. However, these communities rather function in isolation. The European Joint Co-fund programme, EJP SOIL (Towards climate-smart and sustainable agricultural soil management) developed an innovative instrument to this end in each of its 24 participating countries.

EJP SOIL National Hubs are committees of soil stakeholders (farmers, farmers advisors and farmers organisations, industry and agrobusiness, NGOs, local or national governance and policy implementing representatives, scientists), that were set either de-novo for the EJP SOIL or based on existing committees. Their mission is to (i) provide feedback to the EJP SOIL activities and outputs, (ii) voice national position and needs, (iii) contribute to and learn from the work done in research and iv) support in the dissemination of EJP SOIL outcomes

These entities appeared as precious assets for developing a science-policy-practice interface. As an example, the EJP SOIL National Hubs contributed to elaborating the roadmap of the programme and more recently were informed and provided feedback on the programme outputs on soil data harmonization and sharing and on soil monitoring in the perspective of the future European soil health law.

We performed an analysis of their composition and functioning gives insights on how to effectively create and use these entities, which is forecasted by the EU Mission “A Soil Deal for Europe” for all land uses.