AUTHORS: Marie-Alizée Kuhn, Elisabet Nadeu, and Melanie Muro
Regenerative and Conservation Agriculture Practices (ReCAP) offer concrete strategies to enhance soil health and address the high levels of soil degradation present in EU agricultural land. Yet their uptake remains limited by a range of interconnected barriers. This policy brief examines the factors that hinder and those that enable adoption, and how EU policy can support wider implementation.
High levels of land degradation and soil erosion pose a significant threat to agricultural productivity, climate stability, and long-term food security. In this context, Regenerative and Conservation Agriculture (ReCAP) practices are essential to restore soil health and enhance the resilience of farming systems by improving water retention, nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration, and overall ecosystem functioning.
Drawing on the results of EU-funded projects centered on Regenerative and Conservation Agriculture, TRAILS4SOIL workshop data, and supplementary scientific literature, this policy brief identifies the barriers and enablers of ReCAP uptake. Recurring barriers include knowledge gaps, high investment costs, uncertainty regarding crop yields, regulatory instability, social resistance to change due to an ageing population and peer influence, and technical barriers such as a lack of technical support and access to suitable machinery. Key enablers, on the other hand, include peer-to-peer networks, evidence of positive soil health outcomes, financial incentives, supportive policies, and advisory support.
Existing EU policy frameworks, such as CAP eco-schemes and the Nature Restoration Law, along with emerging instruments like transition aid in the post-2027 CAP proposals, could represent strong opportunities for ReCAP adoption. However, as discussed in the brief, these measures still lack strong mandatory integration and sufficient scale to drive systemic change.
The following recommendations are drawn to facilitate the uptake of ReCAP:
- Enabling multi-actor collaboration for equipment sharing, peer networks, and effective advisory systems, and ensuring farmer involvement in the design of agri-environmental measures
- Enhancing policy coherence by introducing long-term policy objectives through target setting, strengthening dedicated funding for ReCAP, explicitly strengthening a result-based payment framework under Article 10 of the post-2027 CAP, as well as integrating ReCAP within the CAP performance monitoring and evaluations framework (PMEF).
- Creating private finance opportunities by mobilizing private capital via blended finance and landscape approaches, as well as implementing ReCAP Key Performance Indicators.
Overall, scaling ReCAP requires context-specific strategies that address transition risks, support economic viability, build farmer confidence, and align policy instruments with the realities of system-level change.
