TempAg is a global research collaboration network established to increase the impact of agricultural research and inform policy making in the world’s temperate regions. Through its activities, TempAg enables policy makers, funding bodies, scientists, and other decision makers, to align national and transnational research agendas to allow innovations and policy interventions for sustainable agriculture in temperate zones.
The TempAg Governing Board met in Paris to discuss outcomes and recommendations from the Foresight workshop report, and how these recommendations could develop into future activity. Professor Peter Gregory, who has chaired TempAg since its inception, announced that he will be stepping down as TempAg Chair and will be replaced by Professor Tim Benton (University of Leeds).
TempAg held a Foresight workshop in October 2016. 40 delegates from academia, policy, industry and professionals in the science-policy interface across 14 temperate countries participated.
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TempAg held a workshop in London to review key issues for sustainable agriculture in temperate countries and identify areas for cross-country collaboration. Delegates from 14 temperate countries participated, with expertise across academia, policy, industry and the science-policy interface.
This paper (When experts disagree: the need to rethink indicator selection for assessing sustainability of agriculture (PDF)) identifies the most important criteria for experts when selecting indicators for sustainability in temperate agriculture.
This work compiled and assessed existing sustainability frameworks in agriculture, highlighting the complexity of Integrated Sustainability Assessment methods (PDF) and the variability in their characteristics.
The network initiates under the auspices of the OECD Global Science Forum with eight signatory countries as full members.
Agriculture in temperate areas is highly productive, a significant proportion of global agricultural output originating from temperate (i.e. non tropical) countries (ref 1, ref 2, ref 3) with this proportion very likely to increase in light of climate change (ref 4, ref 5, ref 6, ref 7). Given the intense agricultural production and advanced agricultural practices performed in temperate areas, there is a growing need for more sustainable and resilient approaches as well as greater connectivity of national research and policy agendas in temperate countries.
TempAg as a global collaborative research network aspires to play an important role (in collaboration with other key international stakeholders) in identifying the type of scientific evidence needed by policy makers to achieve targets relevant to agriculture, and help deliver these agendas in a consistent manner across the temperate region.
TempAg activity is focused around three main scientific themes:
