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For three days in May, Hamburg played host to a question with no easy answer: how can Europe\u2019s farmers keep working the land as the water they depend on grows scarcer and less predictable? The occasion was the EU CAP Network<\/a> conference \u201cWater Resilience: The role of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in promoting sustainable water management,\u201d held from 19 to 21 May 2026, and it drew together an unusually broad range of participants: farmers and policymakers, researchers and advisory services, European Commission representatives and other stakeholders, all circling the same pressing concern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n FARMWISE was there in the person of Assoc. Prof Amir Naghibi<\/a> (Division of Water Resources Engineering<\/a>, Lund University (LinkedIn<\/a>) delivered a project pitch that set out the initiative\u2019s vision and the innovations it is developing to support more sustainable management of agricultural resources and water across the continent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The pressures behind the discussion are no longer distant prospects. Farmers across Europe are contending with more frequent droughts, shifting rainfall patterns, soil degradation, and mounting competition for a finite resource. Yet agriculture is not merely on the receiving end of the problem: it has a vital part to play in safeguarding water quality, curbing nutrient losses, and moving towards more circular, sustainable use. It was this double role – agriculture as both a major consumer of Europe\u2019s water and a potential guardian of it – that shaped three days of debate ranging across circular water use, soil carbon, climate-smart agriculture, groundwater protection, and the practical business of building resilience into farming systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In his pitch, Naghibi presented FARMWISE as a Horizon Europe project working at the interface of agriculture, water management, digital tools, and policy support. It aims to develop and demonstrate data-driven, scalable solutions that help farmers, land managers, and decision-makers use resources more efficiently while easing the strain on soil and water systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFARMWISE is about giving farmers and policymakers the tools to make better decisions about water and agriculture before the consequences arrive, not after,\u201d<\/em> he explained. \u201cIf we can help people see how a choice plays out for soil and water, we can move from reacting to droughts towards proactively planning for resilience.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The centrepiece was the FARMWISE Land Use Policy Simulator<\/strong>: a policy-design tool developed at Lund University that models different land use and crop-composition scenarios and assesses how each might affect water quality. The intention is straightforward but powerful: to put evidence behind decisions, and to let policymakers grasp the likely consequences of different agricultural and land-management choices before they are made rather than after.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dr. Naghibi also went on to introduce a range of complementary FARMWISE tools and approaches: biosensors for sharper environmental and agricultural monitoring; soil-moisture sensors to support more efficient watering; biochar as a potential aid to soil improvement and water retention; decision-support systems for managing water and nutrients; improved irrigation techniques; radar applications in agriculture; and integrated methods for reducing nutrient losses while sustaining crop production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Taken together, these innovations reflect the broader ambition of the project: to combine scientific knowledge, digital decision-support, and practical farming solutions in ways that serve climate resilience, environmental protection, and sustainable food production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the Hamburg discussions carried a recurring lesson, it was that technical robustness alone is not enough. Solutions must also be practical, scalable, and genuinely relevant to the people expected to use them. This emphasis is closely aligned with FARMWISE\u2019s own commitment to developing tools and knowledge that can support real-world decisions by farmers, advisors, policymakers, and others across the agricultural value chain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For a project of FARMWISE\u2019s breadth, the conference offered something a pitch alone cannot: the chance to share its approach, to learn from parallel initiatives, and to strengthen links with organisations working on sustainable water management, climate adaptation, and agricultural innovation. By creating space for exchange between farmers, policymakers, researchers, and European-level stakeholders, the event helped connect perspectives on water resilience and sustainable land management. These are the themes that run directly through FARMWISE and its wider contribution to Europe\u2019s sustainability goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat made Hamburg valuable was the chance to listen,\u201d<\/em> Naghibi reflected. \u201cThe best technology in the world is useless if it doesn\u2019t fit the realities of the farmers and advisors who\u2019ll actually use it, and conferences like this one keep us transparent and honest about that.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n FARMWISE thanks Assoc. Prof Amir Naghibi for representing the project and sharing its work with the conference audience, and the EU CAP Network and all its participants for a valuable exchange of ideas. Through continued collaboration with stakeholders across Europe, the project will keep working to support smarter, more sustainable, and more resilient management of agricultural resources.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For three days in May, Hamburg played host to a question with no easy answer: how can Europe\u2019s farmers keep working the land as the water they depend on grows scarcer and less predictable? The occasion was the EU CAP Network conference \u201cWater Resilience: The role of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in promoting sustainable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farmwise-project.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farmwise-project.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farmwise-project.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farmwise-project.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farmwise-project.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=865"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/farmwise-project.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":868,"href":"https:\/\/farmwise-project.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865\/revisions\/868"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farmwise-project.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farmwise-project.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farmwise-project.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farmwise-project.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Where policy meets technology<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The value of listening<\/h2>\n\n\n\n