Crop improvements for future‐proofing European food systems: A focus‐group‐driven analysis of agricultural production stakeholder priorities and viewpoints

Abstract

Crop breeding is one of the main tools which can assist in future‐proofing food systems for more sustainable outcomes. In order to ensure priorities are aligned with the needs and wants of food system actors, it is essential to engage with key stakeholders to understand preferences on plant breeding solutions. This study presents results from a series of online focus groups conducted with agricultural production related stakeholders (i.e. farmers and farmer representatives, policymakers and NGOs) regarding the potential for crop improvement to future‐proof European food systems. Stakeholders shared concern around climate change and environmental impacts (particularly drought and heat stress), and general agreement about the need to develop resilient crops which combine multiple positive attributes, while reducing trade‐offs and negative externalities. Stakeholders also prioritized plant breeding solutions for areas where they felt they had little agency, and existing alternative solutions, such as improving input use efficiency, or altering diets to be considered where these are available. This highlights the need for the crop breeding community to focus its attentions on the ‘most hard to fix’ issues, where in‐field measures are currently not offering viable solutions, to maximize acceptance and adoption by agricultural production stakeholders. It also highlights that consideration of trade‐offs, within plant and within a broader agri‐food context, must be integrated into crop breeding research and development, with trade‐off analysis an explicit component of breeding research. Understanding broader agri‐food system knock‐on effects of plant innovation is a non‐trivial challenge requiring interdisciplinary research and close partnerships with food system stakeholders.

Communicating about plant breeding and genome editing in plants: Assessment of European stakeholders, sources, channels and content

“…Focussing on sustainability in communication activities might increase the opportunity to agree on shared values among different stakeholders and could provide a starting point to broaden the debate on applications of plant genome editing. Two recently conducted citizen juries 1 with consumer experts and societal stakeholders concluded that the acceptance of new plant breeding techniques by society could be increased when its application serves goals with a societal dimension such as environmental sustainability, resilience and quality (Nair et al, 2022, Stetkiewicz et al, 2022).…”

CropBooster‐P: Towards a roadmap for plant research to future‐proof crops in Europe

“…The CropBooster-P database can be considered as a literature repository that can be continuously updated with state-or-the-art literature in the fields of yield, nutritional quality and sustainability. Within the project, the database serves as a foundation because it is both scientifically sound overview of the current state of the art in distinct research fields, as well as a resource with which to engage in discussion with stakeholder groups (Nair et al, 2022;Stetkiewicz et al, 2022) and the general public in later phases of the CropBooster-P project.…”

“…To this end, WP3 ('Engage society') engages the general public in a dialog about the need for crop improvement. To do so, consumers and other non-expert lay people are engaged in a series of workshops and events (Nair et al, 2022;Stetkiewicz et al, 2022) to find out how the issues of the CropBooster-P project are perceived and what the specific objectives of different societal groups are. To understand and advise how to best communicate complex scientific information to different societal groups, including the general public in Europe, attitudes, expectations and appropriate means of communication are explored through questionnaires and interviews in WP6 ('Outreach and communication').…”

“…The CropBooster‐P database can therefore be considered as an expert resource including recent advances and/or key findings with regard to traits that have been successfully selected/changed and that could contribute to the future‐proofing of our crops in terms of increasing plant yield, sustainability and nutritional quality. Within the project, the database served as a foundation because it is both a scientifically sound overview of the current state‐of‐the‐art in distinct research fields, as well as a resource with which to engage in discussion with stakeholder groups (Nair et al, 2022; Stetkiewicz, Menary, Nair, Rufino, Fischer, Cornelissen, Duchesne, et al, 2022) and the general public in later phases of the CropBooster‐P project.…”

“…To this end, WP3 (‘Engage society’) engaged the general public in a dialog about the need for crop improvement. For this, consumers and other non‐expert lay people were engaged in a series of workshops and events to find out how the issues of the CropBooster‐P project are perceived and identify the specific objectives of different societal groups (Nair et al, 2022; Stetkiewicz, Menary, Nair, Rufino, Fischer, Cornelissen, Duchesne, et al, 2022; Stetkiewicz, Menary, Nair, Rufino, Fischer, Cornelissen, Guichaoua, et al, 2022). On the topic of crop improvement, participants ranked environmental sustainability traits, also referred to as traits underlying crop resilience, higher than those improving nutritional quality or only increasing yield.…”