TSHN receives FFG Impact Innovation funding

The TSHN Bodengesundheits- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH receives funding under the programme FFG Impact Innovation for the project:

„Soil Health, Measurement, and Financing through Ecosystem Certificates“

With this project, TSHN is launching an innovative approach to Measurement, assessment and digital depiction of soil health to further develop and create a robust long-term foundation for the financing of ecosystem services.

Why the topic is relevant

Round 70% of soils in the EU are considered to be degraded. At the same time, standardised and widely accepted methods for comparably assessing soil health and making its effects on agriculture, climate, water management, and resilience visible are still lacking.

Existing approaches – from soil samples to satellite data and certification models – provide important partial contributions, but are often not sufficiently harmonised or difficult to compare.

Project objective

The project's central question is:

How can soil health be standardised, traceable, and digitally mapped in the future?

For this purpose:

• existing measurement and assessment approaches analysed,
• identified open fields of knowledge,
• Experts from science, practice, business, and administration brought together and
• a first conceptual demonstrator to be developed.

This demonstrator is intended to show how standardised collection and presentation of soil health could be implemented technically and methodologically in the future.

Soil & Value Summit at the Wels University of Applied Sciences

A central component of the project is an interdisciplinary symposium/summit on:

📍 FH Upper Austria – Wels Campus
📅 10th & 11th March

Here, leading experts from the fields of:

• Soil health,
• Agriculture,
• Science,
• Insurance,
• Digitalisation,
• Sustainability and Financing

work together on open questions and future solutions.

Basis for future Living Lab

The FFG project simultaneously forms the basis for a planned large-volume Living Lab, which will be brought to Austria for the first time. The aim is to further strengthen Austria as a location for applied, internationally compatible soil health research and innovative ecosystem models.

Focus on collaboration and open innovation

TSHN consciously pursues a Open innovation and co-creation approach. Scientific institutions, agricultural businesses, companies, insurance firms, administrations, and other stakeholders should work together on a practical and long-term sustainable solution.

More information about the symposium and the project partners will follow shortly.

read more about the summit here