Co-financed by the European Union under the LIFE CCM 2018 program, agriCOlture aims to guide the transition of the livestock supply chain of the Emilian Apennine towards more efficient agronomic practices of soil conservation and to a new management of organic matter at farm and territorial scale. Starting point of the project is the significant potential of this sector of the mountain economy for Climate Change mitigation. More precisely, the project faces the structural difficulty of the emilian mountain agriculture in managing, in a sustainable and efficient way, the organic matter produced by the local important livestock sector, mainly involved in the Parmigiano Reggiano production. The complex morphology of the territory combined with the long duree condition of property fragmentation make the mantainance of field drainages and the balanced distribution of organic matter produced by the farms problematic and expensive. This ends up in marginalizing, deteriorating and finally expelling from the production cycles extended portions of agricultural land. The erosion of fertile soil due to the absence of these good management practices is enhanced by two widespread practices: on the one hand, a radicated tradition of deep tillage and, on the other hand, an excessively long cycle of tillage that bring grassland (mainly multi-year alfalfa fields) to a progressive depletion of productivity. To deal with this problem, agriCOlture aims to introduce agronomic best practices and appropriate governance strategies in order to demonstrate their effectiveness for the protection of soil organic carbon and in the recovering of marginal and hydrogeologically unstable soils. Concerning the governance, the project intends to update the traditional role that reclamation consortia have played in guaranteeing the conditions for inhabitation and for agricultural production in the Emilian Apennine. It does so by building an innovative partnership that merges the two large Consortia of Emilia Centrale and Burana, with a Research Center specialized in livestock production such as CRPA and an institution aimed at conservation such as the Tuscan–Emilian Apennine National Park.

The LIFE MAGIS – MAde Green in Italy Scheme project supports the diffusion of the “Made Green in Italy” scheme, promoted by the Italian Ministry of the Environment to valorize Italian products with the best environmental performances. LIFE MAGIS develops Product Category Rules for many supply chains in the agro-food, window production, and leather sectors which are verified and tested with pilot companies. The project organizes communication activities directed toward citizens and final consumers to experiment with the most effective ways to communicate the environmental value of products and has also the aim to promote the Made Green in Italy scheme to other supply chains, sectors, and European countries. LIFE MAGIS makes available datasets and tools to make the adoption of the scheme easier for interested companies.