Participatory techniques are widely recognized as essential in addressing the challenges of agri-environmental policy and decision-making. Furthermore, it is well known that stakeholder analysis and social network analysis are useful methods in the identification of actors that are involved in a system and the connections between them. To identify key stakeholders and improve the transfer of information from national-to farm-level, we compared a stakeholder analysis with farmer-centric networks for primary productivity, carbon regulation and biodiversity through the case study of Latvia. Farmer-centric networks show a higher number of stakeholders communicating on the topic of primary productivity network comparing to other topics. We found three pathways for improving knowledge transfer in agri-environmental governance: horizontal strengthening of farming community, horizontal strengthening of policy departments, and vertical strengthening between policy departments and farmers. The first step is to ensure that policy-makers have a common understanding of the results that should be achieved. The second step is the transfer of know-how between farmers to develop new solutions. The third step is the training of advisers in the land multifunctionality and the strengthening of communication and knowledge transfer between policy departments and farmers in order to jointly achieve the desired direction at that national level. Long-term cooperation between many stakeholders, including knowledge transfer, the development and implementation of solutions, and monitoring are essential in order to adequately address global societal challenges. The application of our mixed methods approach to elucidate pathways for improved governance of knowledge and information is of direct relevance to other jurisdictions seeking to transition towards multifunctional and sustainable land management.

Recent forecasts show a need to increase agricultural production globally by 60% from 2005 to 2050, in order to meet a rising demand from a growing population. This poses challenges for scientists and policy makers to formulate solutions on how to increase food production and simultaneously meet environmental targets such as the conservation and protection of water, the conservation of biodiversity, and the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. As soil and land are subject to growing pressure to meet both agronomic and environmental targets, there is an urgent need to understand to what extent these diverging targets can be met simultaneously. Previously, the concept of Functional Land Management (FLM) was developed as a framework for managing the multifunctionality of land. In this paper, we deploy and evaluate the concept of FLM, using a real case-study of Irish agriculture. We investigate a number of scenarios, encompassing combinations of intensification, expansion and land drainage, for managing three soil functions, namely primary productivity, water purification and carbon sequestration. We use proxy-indicators (milk production, nitrate concentrations and area of new afforestation) to quantify the ‘supply’ of these three soil functions, and identify the relevant policy targets to frame the ‘demand’ for these soil functions.Specifically, this paper assesses how soil management and land use management interact in meeting these multiple targets simultaneously, by employing a non-spatial land use model for livestock production in Ireland that assesses the supply of soil functions for contrasting soil drainage and land use categories. Our results show that, in principle, it is possible to manage these three soil functions to meet both agronomic and environmental objectives, but as we add more soil functions, the management requirements become increasingly complex. In theory, an expansion scenario could meet all of the objectives simultaneously. However, this scenario is highly unlikely to materialise due to farm fragmentation, low land mobility rates and the challenging afforestation rates required for achieving the greenhouse gas reduction targets. In the absence of targeted policy interventions, an unmanaged combination of scenarios is more likely to emerge. The challenge for policy formation on future land use is how to move from an unmanaged combination scenario towards a managed combination scenario, in which the soil functions are purposefully managed to meet current and future agronomic and environmental targets, through a targeted combination of intensification, expansion and land drainage. Such purposeful management requires that the supply of each soil function is managed at the spatial scale at which the corresponding demand manifests itself. This spatial scale may differ between the soil functions, and may range from farm scale to national scale. Finally, our research identifies the need for future research to also consider and address the misalignment of temporal scales between the supply and demand of soil functions

Conventional soil tillage creates suitable conditions for plant growth, but it is an energy and labor-intensive technology causing ecologically unfavorable changes in the soil. In order to reduce GHG emissions from agricultural soils, reduced soil tillage and different crops have been proposed. However, the impact of individual practices on GHG emissions is affected by multiple on-site variables and is limited to different soil types and climate zones. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the impact of two soil tillage treatments and four agricultural crops on GHG emissions from clay soil in temperate climate. During the growing seasons from 2018 to 2021, we measured soil flux of N₂O, CH₄ and CO₂ using a Picarro G2508 on a broad multifaceted field experiment with two tillage treatments. This study shows that winter wheat with conventional tillage treatment may emit significantly lower N₂O emission (8.3 g ha⁻¹ day⁻¹) and higher CH₄ assimilation (−11.9 g ha⁻¹ day⁻¹) in warmer and drier growing season compared to winter wheat (26.1 g ha⁻¹ day⁻¹ and −3.3 CH₄ g ha⁻¹ day⁻¹, respectively) and spring barley (11.1 g ha⁻¹ day⁻¹ and −2.9 g ha⁻¹ day⁻¹, respectively) with reduced tillage treatment in cooler and wetter growing season (p<0.05).

The increased demand for bio based products worldwide provides an opportunity for Eastern European countries to increase their production in agriculture and forestry. At the same time, such economic development must be congruent with the European Union’s long-term climate and biodiversity objectives. As a country that is rich in bioresources, the Latvian case study is highly relevant to many other countries—especially those in Central and Eastern Europe—and faces a choice of transition pathways to meet both economic and environmental objectives. In order to assess the trade-offs between investments in the bioeconomy and the achievement of climate and biodiversity objectives, we used the Functional Land Management (FLM) framework for the quantification of the supply and demand for the primary productivity, carbon regulation and biodiversity functions. We related the supply of these three soil functions to combinations of land use and soil characteristics. The demand for the same functions were derived from European, national and regional policy objectives. Our results showed different spatial scales at which variation in demand and supply is manifested. High demand for biodiversity was associated with areas dominated by agricultural land at the local scale, while regional differences of unemployment rates and the target for GDP increases framed the demand for primary productivity. National demand for carbon regulation focused on areas dominated by forests on organic soils. We subsequently identified mismatches between the supply and demand for soil functions, and we selected spatial locations for specific land use changes and improvements in management practices to promote sustainable development of the bio-economy. Our results offer guidance to policy makers that will help them to form a national policy that will underpin management practices that are effective and tailored toward local climate conditions and national implementation pathways.