Connecting actors to enhance multifunctionality in grass-based livestock sector through ecosystem service monitoring and informed decision-making

Grass-based livestock farming systems are central to European food security and rural identity. They produce high-quality food while delivering essential ecosystem services (ES) such as carbon sequestration, water purification and maintenance of iconic landscapes. These multifunctional systems are increasingly under threat; productive areas facing intensification, marginal areas facing abandonment, both complexified by climate change. Addressing this dual challenge requires innovative management strategies promoting multifunctionality (MF). GrassConnect (GC) aims to address this challenge by defining strategies promoting MF and developing operational functionalities for tools, associated with decision-making and ES monitoring. At the value-chain scale, it will provide solutions enabling private actors to incentivise ES supply in corporate responsibility context, while supporting policy-makers in implementing targeted payments for ES of specific concern (e.g. forest fire prevention). GC will apply an ambitious interdisciplinary and multi-actor approach through a network of 13 hubs in 11 countries, covering diverse pedoclimatic conditions and challenges, connecting farmers, industry, actors involved in nature and environmental regulations, NGO, citizens and scientists from fields including livestock production, ecology, economics and sociology. This will ensure compatibility between animal production and ES promotion, with the aim to safeguard farmer income, well-being and generational renewal. GC will integrate existing knowledge on grassland management into decision support and Earth Observation-based monitoring solutions, building on EU frameworks such as the Copernicus platform. GC will deliver practical, economically-viable innovations, with field impact, strengthen the transnational knowledge exchange and practice, and contribute to implement fair, healthy and environment-friendly food systems spanning the entire chain from primary production to consumption.