Report of the First European Carbon Farming Summit (version under review)

The first European Carbon Farming Summit was organised in Valencia (Spain) from 5-7 March 2024 as part of the EU-funded project Credible: Building momentum and trust to achieve credible carbon farming in the EU (GA-101112951; HE topic call HORIZON-MISS- 2022-SOIL-01-06). The summit gathered 600+ participants, including 265 on site and 358 on-line from around 20 countries. It was organised around a mix of plenary sessions and breakout sessions (BOS) organised by 11 focus groups (FG) of the Credible project. DG Clima of the EU Commission opened and actively contributed to the Summit. Credible indeed complements the work of its Expert Group guiding the development of the Carbon Removal Certification Framework (CRCF), which general directions have been adopted by the EU in February 2024. The plenary sessions opened the discussions and comprised keynote lectures aiming to set the stage and inspire participants as well introductory presentations of the topics to be addressed as resulting from the work of the FGs of the project. The core of the discussion occurred in workshops organised and moderated by the 11 FGs. Overall, this first Summit was a success: participation was more than initially expected, motivation of the participants for such a Summit was high, contribution and insights provided were of high quality. It was also recognized that the work produced by the various FGs (and related breakout sessions) complements well the work of the Expert Group of the CRCF of DG Clima. It also highlighted a shared view of most participants: carbon farming is more than an approach to store carbon in agricultural soils, it is -and needs to be- a tool to help the transformation of agriculture toward a more agroecological approach.