Bright spots in agriculture - learning from today's role models for a sustainable future (BRIGHT-Futures)

Climate change and the ongoing destruction of the environment are two of the biggest global challenges and time is running out for countermeasures. Agriculture has a key role to play in the necessary transformation towards greater sustainability, as more than 50% of the German and global land surface is used for agriculture. This makes agriculture a major driver of global greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation and species extinction, while at the same time being massively affected by the consequences - such as increasing droughts, pest infestation and unequal distribution of food. Agriculture itself must therefore be part of the solution - but what does this solution look like?

In the BRIGHT-Futures project, we want to conduct targeted research into the principles of sustainable and successful agriculture. To this end, we will identify successful examples of sustainably functioning agricultural systems and learn from these ‘lighthouses’ - the bright spots. After all, there are already numerous examples of such bright spots of economically profitable agriculture that is also climate-friendly and promotes biodiversity. What has not yet been achieved, however, is to derive general principles from these examples of success that allow the findings to be generalised and transferred to other cases. However, this is necessary in order to identify the most effective leverage points for a large-scale transformation of land management.