Resilient Agriculture
Resilient agriculture offers one of the greatest opportunities to help Europe address human and climate health, along with the financial well-being of farmers.
EIT Food has created a series of activities for farmers, agrifood businesses and consumers to scale regenerative practices in Europe. The aim is to spread knowledge and outcomes of our project to build a European regenerative farming community.
Programmes catered to your needs
For students
Make a difference in Food Systems.
The future of food depends on people ready to build sustainable and resilient systems. At EIT Food, you gain the knowledge, skills, and tools to turn ambition into impact.
Explore our Educational Programs, Internships, Academy, and Courses — and choose your path. Not sure where to start? We’re here to guide you.
For farmers
EIT Food provides farmers with practical tools, learning programmes and collaborative opportunities that help them transition to more resilient, regenerative and competitive production systems. Our support ranges from capacity-building and innovation testing to access to networks across the agrifood value chain.
For startups & NGOs
We provide a collaborative framework that helps organisations engage, innovate and grow within Europe’s agrifood ecosystem. Through our programmes, partners can identify relevant funding pathways, connect with key stakeholders and contribute to initiatives that drive resilience, scalability and sustainable transformation. Our approach focuses on enabling practical solutions and delivering measurable impact aligned with Europe’s sustainability goals.
For financial insitutions & policy makers
Make confident decisions grounded in real-world evidence. EIT Food connects applied research, innovation and field implementation to help policy leaders and financial institutions reduce uncertainty and design effective strategies for resilient agriculture. By bridging science, markets and public priorities, we transform data into actionable insights that support smarter investments and policy frameworks.
Through initiatives such as Test Farms and regional Landscapes (see below), we generate robust, field-based evidence from pilots, continuous monitoring and real farming environments. This enables transparent assessment of performance, scalability and impact — strengthening trust and enabling informed decisions that drive long-term agricultural resilience.
Our Impact
The impact we have had since 2020 in numbers
Impact inside the Farm
Impact outside the farm
Introduction
Europe’s food system faces overlapping shocks — from pandemics and conflicts to extreme weather. Farmers face economic pressure and rising environmental demands, revealing structural vulnerabilities. Resilient agriculture is essential to secure food supply, livelihoods, and ecosystem protection in an increasingly unstable context.
What is Resilient Agriculture?
Resilience operates at two levels.
At farm and landscape scale, practices such as regenerative soil management, crop diversity, agroforestry, and integrated livestock improve soil health, biodiversity, and water retention, reducing climate and production risks.
At system scale, resilient supply chains, data transparency, financial incentives, and participatory governance make food systems more adaptive and less fragile.
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From Regeneration to Resilience
European agriculture faces climate stress, biodiversity loss, and soil degradation. EIT Food supports the transition toward farming systems that are both regenerative and resilient.
According to the EU, resilient agriculture is the ability of farming systems to anticipate, absorb, and adapt to climatic, economic, or social shocks while maintaining food supply. Regenerative agriculture restores the natural capital that makes this possible by rebuilding soils, improving water retention, and enhancing biodiversity.
In this sense, regeneration is the foundation of resilience. By renewing ecosystems, farmers strengthen their capacity to manage risk, scarcity, and disruption.
Regenerative agriculture strengthens Food Systems Resilience by improving soils, biodiversity, and water efficiency, helping farms withstand shocks and sustain livelihoods. At the same time, it advances EIT Food’s Net Zero goals by reducing emissions, increasing carbon capture, and supporting circular, climate-positive food systems.
Our initiatives
Explore our current initiatives in Resilient Agriculture
Landscapes
EIT Food Landscapes are regional innovation ecosystems that connect stakeholders across the food system to collaborate on sustainability, entrepreneurship, and skills development. They act as local hubs that bring together industry, academia, startups, and public actors to accelerate the transformation toward more resilient and sustainable food systems.
Academies
EIT Food accelerates this transition through training, demonstration farms, advisory support, finance, and digital tools, translating regenerative principles into measurable and scalable outcomes. EIT Food created the Academy to train relevant skills in Regenerative Agriculture and facilitate the transition.
Resilient Agriculture Portfolio
Together with Foodvalley NL and the Food Innovation Hub Europe, it developed the Resilient Agriculture Portfolio to support implementation at scale.
Think & Do Tank
To further enable collaboration, EIT Food launched the Think & Do Tank in September 2025 — a pre-competitive platform bringing together over 20 agrifood organisations to identify needs, inform policy, and co-create projects for resilient agriculture.
HUBs
EIT Food also selected partners to create the HUBs, which are our ‘contact points’ in EIT RIS countries. They play a central role in their national innovation ecosystems, with extensive regional networks and experience in supporting entrepreneurs and hosting local initiatives.
Test Farms
Test Farms connects innovative agritech startups with farmers to test and validate new solutions in real-world agricultural conditions. It helps accelerate the adoption of practical innovations while reducing risks for both entrepreneurs and farmers.
Lilas4Soils
Lilas4Soils accelerates the transition to regenerative agriculture through the use of soil data and digital monitoring. By integrating information on soil health, biodiversity, and resource use, the initiative helps farmers and stakeholders to make more sustainable decisions, reduce operational risks, and increase the resilience of their production systems.
Missions
Our journey connects science, business, and education to transform Europe’s food systems into resilient, future-ready ecosystems that anticipate change, recover from shocks, and generate sustainable value for people and the planet. By empowering farmers and rural communities through regenerative practices—restoring soils, enhancing biodiversity, reducing inputs, producing healthier food and capturing carbon—we position agriculture as a core part of the climate solution, advancing climate neutrality while strengthening economically viable and socially inclusive food systems.
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Food System Resilience
We’ll improve food security and safety for consumers everywhere by enabling and establishing resilient and dependable digitally enabled food supply chains.
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Healthier Lives Through Food
We will make a material difference to quality of life by enabling more consumers to have better choices through access to affordable, healthier food products and actionable information.
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Net Zero Food System
We will enable the transition to a net zero food system, measuring and quantifying the change through reduced CO2 equivalent emissions.
