The CRIKIT project aims to develop a dynamic multi-criteria tool to assess the feasibility (techno-economic, social and environmental) of on-farming measures based on disruptive technological innovations and emerging practices from a global top-down approach and sectorial bottom-up angle. The novelty is to conduct a systematic assessment that integrates both global climate scenario trends and bottom-up techno-economic, social and environmental assessments into a multi-criteria analysis in order to assess sustainability benefits and possible trade-offs of disruptive technologies and emerging practices. The tool will illustrate a specific case study in Centre-Southern Portugal related to cereals (maize, sorghum and rice), wine and olive crops, major cash crops in the Mediterranean region, and applied by local farmers and agribusiness stakeholders.
CRIKIT’s overall objectives are five-fold:
By exploring both top-down and bottom-up analytical frameworks, the CRIKIT project characterises sustainability indicators of key disruptive and emerging technologies based on digital agriculture, gene technology, smart farming inputs, sustainable intensification practises, and advanced food products and their potential to steam a transformative change in agriculture to mainstream climate resilient innovative technologies in the sector. CRIKIT’s milestones will build knowledge to guide agricultural players and agribusiness decision makers towards resilient and low-GHG agricultural systems.
The CRIKIT project comprises six tasks, four focused on scientific activities. Firstly, we will assess global pathways to identify long-term alternative mitigation measures in agriculture and list key disruptive technologies and emerging practices. Secondly, a techno-economic and social assessment based on economic analysis and social-life cycle assessment (LCA) principles will be conducted. Thirdly, the global and local environmental impacts will be quantified based on life cycle assessment principles. Lastly, a dynamic multi-criteria tool that incorporates techno-economic, social and global and local environmental indicators into a single score based on Multiple-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). The tool will illustrate a local case study of cereals, wine and olive crops in the Centre-Southern region of Portugal.
CRIKIT main contributions to the field of agriculture sciences raise the science support for low-GHG and resilient agriculture to a new level by:
The CRIKIT consortium is in a unique position to achieve these outcomes via a combination of interdisciplinary backgrounds and network with local practitioners and agribusiness players. The consortium includes 4 leading research groups (IDMEC/IPSantarém/ICL) well-known for their scientific excellence within the field of innovative technologies, agricultural science, and climate mitigation and adaptation assessment. The team comprises senior researchers with complementary expertise, namely 3 national senior fellows, 1 international expert, 1 senior researcher and 1 PD fellow. This unique collaboration facilitates knowledge transfer across disciplines and enables capacity development of younger researchers and future scientific leaders.
The CRIKIT project comprises six tasks, four focused on scientific activities. Firstly, we assess global pathways to identify long-term alternative mitigation measures in agriculture and list key disruptive technologies and emerging practices. Secondly, a techno-economic and social assessment based on economic analysis and social-life cycle assessment (LCA) principles is conducted. Thirdly, the global and local environmental impacts is quantified based on life cycle assessment principles. Lastly, a dynamic multi-criteria tool that incorporates techno-economic, social and global and local environmental indicators into a single score based on Multiple-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) is developed. The tool will illustrate a local case study of cereals, wine and olive crops in the Centre-Southern region of Portugal.
Task 2 (T2) will assess global pathways to identify long-term alternative mitigation measures in agriculture and list key disruptive technologies and emerging practices. A systematic assessment of the IPCC AR6 database has been conducted. IAMs can provide a portfolio of emerging technologies and related productivity gains, emissions reductions, and resource efficiency improvements under different climate scenarios. However, IAMs do not always indicate the granularity of technologies that deliver the on-farm transformations. Rather, they show the needed outcomes that new generic categories of technologies and practices have to deliver.
In this context, Task 3 (T3) maps the typology of technologies identified in T2 and assesses techno-economic and social indicators of the technologies and practices involved. This includes costs, payback time, revenues, and social acceptability. The analysis illustrates the specific context of cereals, wine and olive crops in the Centre-Southern Portugal region.
Task 4 (T4) evaluates the GHG mitigation potential of on-farm measures and its interactions with other local ecosystem services. A prospective LCA is conducted following the ISO14040 norms, with the support of life cycle databases and experimental data collected in field work from cereals, wine and olive crops. The evaluation will expand the current ReCiPe2016 midpoint method indicators, including 7 innovative environmental indicators.
Task 5 (T5) combines main outputs from T3 and T4 to develop a dynamic multi-criteria tool that incorporates techno-economic, social and global and local environmental indicators into a single score based on Multiple-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), following the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) of the judgments of agribusiness stakeholders. This is a versatile method based on decomposing a complex problem into a system of hierarchies. It uses a comparison of pairwise indicators that allow stakeholders to weigh coefficients and compare alternatives. A matrixial analysis is developed by using the relative importance of the alternatives in terms of each criterion.
Task 6 (T6) focuses on the dissemination of results in scientific communities and agribusiness stakeholders. Scientific outcomes will be published in international journal article publications and disseminated in national and international conferences. Two workshops are planned to disseminate outcomes of CRIKIT to relevant stakeholders in agribusiness.
