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Several studies agree on the existence of a considerable extension of land in Europe deemed less favourable for conventional agriculture. This land has been either abandoned because of its productivity, or it is used as grassland. MAGIC is based on the premise that cultivation of selected industrial crops on areas facing natural constraints (e.g. extreme climatic conditions, low soil productivity, steep slope, etc.) can i) ensure the production of resource-efficient feedstocks, with low indirect land-use change (iLUC), for a growing bio-based industry, and ii) increase farmers’ incomes through access to new markets and the revalorization of marginal land. It has been estimated that as many as 2.5 million potentially contaminated sites exist across Europe, whose management cost (81% only for remediation) is about € 6.5 billion per year. In MAGIC, contaminated and degraded soils will also be included as it is well documented that the proportion of these land-types is increasing due to anthropogenic activities. Contaminated soils cannot be used for food or feed production for sanitary reasons and thus provide great potential for the production of biomass for material or energy use. MAGIC Deliverable D1.6 – A first prototype of the decision support tool (DSS) aims to provide the information described above and generated within the MAGIC project to the various interested stakeholders across Europe. This first prototype will be improved upon in the next version (July 2020) and the final version (July 2021). All three current information platforms (MAGIC-Maps, MAGIC-Crops and the DSS are available at http://magic-h2020.eu/.

Several studies agree on the existence of a considerable extension of land in Europe deemed less favourable for conventional agriculture. This land has been either abandoned because of its productivity, or it is used as grassland. MAGIC is based on the premise that cultivation of selected industrial crops on areas facing natural constraints (e.g. extreme climatic conditions, low soil productivity, steep slope, etc.) can i) ensure the production of resource-efficient feedstocks, with low indirect land-use change (iLUC), for a growing bio-based industry, and ii) increase farmers’ incomes through access to new markets and the revalorization of marginal land. It has been estimated that as many as 2.5 million potentially contaminated sites exist across Europe, whose management cost (81% only for remediation) is about € 6.5 billion per year. In MAGIC, contaminated and degraded soils will also be included as it is well documented that the proportion of these land-types is increasing due to anthropogenic activities. Contaminated soils cannot be used for food or feed production for sanitary reasons and thus provide great potential for the production of biomass for material or energy use. MAGIC Deliverable D1.6 – A first prototype of the decision support tool (DSS) aims to provide the information described above and generated within the MAGIC project to the various interested stakeholders across Europe. This first prototype will be improved upon in the next version (July 2020) and the final version (July 2021). All three current information platforms (MAGIC-Maps, MAGIC-Crops and the DSS are available at http://magic-h2020.eu/.

This study deals with approaches for a social-ecological friendly European bioeconomy based on biomass from industrial crops cultivated on marginal agricultural land. The selected crops to be investigated are: Biomass sorghum, camelina, cardoon, castor, crambe, Ethiopian mustard, giant reed, hemp, lupin, miscanthus, pennycress, poplar, reed canary grass, safflower, Siberian elm, switchgrass, tall wheatgrass, wild sugarcane, and willow. The research question focused on the overall crop growth suitability under low-input management. The study assessed: (i) How the growth suitability of industrial crops can be defined under the given natural constraints of European marginal agricultural lands; and (ii) which agricultural practices are required for marginal agricultural land low-input systems (MALLIS). For the growth-suitability analysis, available thresholds and growth requirements of the selected industrial crops were defined. The marginal agricultural land was categorized according to the agro-ecological zone (AEZ) concept in combination with the marginality constraints, so-called 'marginal agro-ecological zones' (M-AEZ). It was found that both large marginal agricultural areas and numerous agricultural practices are available for industrial crop cultivation on European marginal agricultural lands. These results help to further describe the suitability of industrial crops for the development of social-ecologically friendly MALLIS in Europe. publishersversion published