Twenty one European partners are joining forces to enhance the growing area of legumes in Europe. The LEGENDARY project (2024-2028) will provide ready-to-use indicators that will better enable farmers and advisors to evaluate and appreciate the benefits of growing legumes.
The project partners will achieve this by developing tools and methods going considerably beyond the state-of-the-art to quantify Ecosystem Services of perennial and annual legumes in different agro-climatic zones.
In early February the consortium partners gathered in Ghent for the kick-off meeting of LEGENDARY. Forty partners discussed the different work packages and enjoyed the physical discussions.
As part of the LEGENDARY kick-off, a field trip ‘Ecosystem services in practice’ was organised near Ghent. We visited UGent’s regional field experiment ‘Herb-rich grasslands enriched with different mixtures of perennial legumes’ which is part of the LEGENDARY project. We were then welcomed by the owner/farmer of the Smissenbroek estate for a visit to the fields. There we were also introduced to the work of ‘Boerennatuur Vlaanderen’, an association of farmers working towards a biodiverse, climate-resilient and economically strong agricultural sector in Flanders and to the ‘Rodeland project’, a landscape project in which governments, nature and agricultural organisations and research institutes around Ghent work together to strengthen and further develop the landscape.