In a few years in Europe, soil health and the impact of agriculture have become major issues for science and regulation.
In this context, companies, research centers, public authorities and associations are multiplying their cooperation with Genesis, considered as the pioneer in measuring the sustainability of agricultural practices, environmental impact and soil health.
The main challenges are technical and scientific knowledge, standardization of indicators and large-scale operational deployment.
GENESIS is a winner of the i-Nov component of the French government's innovation competition. This support scheme, financed by the France 2030 plan and operated by Bpifrance in partnership with ADEME, aims to select innovation projects with particularly strong potential for the French and European economy. The i-Nov innovation competition is designed to select projects with particularly strong potential for the French economy, which can be expected to have a global reach!
Genesis has been selected by the EU to collaborate in the EU SOIL MISSION. The main objective of the mission 'A Soil Deal for Europe' is to create 100 living, flagship laboratories to lead the transition to healthy soils by 2030. This mission is based on two major schemes in which Genesis participates, one to define the indicators of soil health, BENCHMARKS (Building a European Network for the Characterisation and Harmonisation of Monitoring Approaches for Research and Knowledge on Soil), the other to conduct experiments in European soil labs.
CDC Biodiversité, a subsidiary of the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, has entrusted Genesis with the exclusive supply of impact measurement indicators for the Nature 2050 projects. These projects aim at restoring biodiversity in the territories and promoting their adaptation to climate change. Genesis provides the measurement and monitoring tool, as well as the identification of impact improvement levers
On behalf of EU, AFNOR, the French standards agency, has chosen GENESIS to join the working group in charge of creating an ISO standard for measuring soil quality. The role of GENESIS is to provide operational expertise in soil quality assessment methods and, in particular, in the choice of soil quality and health indicators.
During the COP15 in Abidjan, the government of Côte d'Ivoire signed an agreement with GENESIS for the environmental certification of soil restoration projects funded by the "Abidjan Initiative". This program aims mainly to ensure transparency on the environmental impact of export crops (coffee, hevea, cocoa, cotton in particular).
This agreement with ENS has been completed by a joint participation in the European FREACS project, funded by the external call for tenders of the European Agricultural Soils Program EJP SOIL. This project associates other academic partners such as INRAe, Helsinki University, Landcare Research (NZ), Sorbonne University, Thünen Institute of Climate Smart Agriculture, Finnish Meteorological Institute.
The Ecole Normale Supérieure and the CNRS have signed a scientific cooperation agreement with GENESIS to develop knowledge of carbon dynamics in European soils. The development of this program is based on an active collaboration with the Joint Research Centre, which is the internal scientific service of the European Commission and which has an important soil bank in Ispra, Italy.