Marginal lands and industrial crops for the European bioeconomy
Combining bio-based products, climate resilience and biodiversity through innovative agricultural value chains.
Supporting the European Bioeconomy
The transition to a bio-based economy requires a sustainable supply of biomass, while ensuring food security and respecting our environment.
Climate-resilient industrial crops grown on marginal agricultural land can provide sustainable biomass for the European bioeconomy, without reducing the land available for food, while enhancing soil health and protecting biodiversity.
MIDAS is a Horizon Europe project that aims to:
Map and characterize marginal land in Europe for low-ILUC biomass production
Grow industrial crops on marginal land with climate-resilient and biodiversity-compatible systems
Produce sustainable biomass feedstock additional to food production
Build value chains and develop business for innovative bio-based products
Bio-based value chains
MIDAS adopts a resource-efficient biorefinery concept to develop innovative value chains for a wide range of bio-products.
Protecting soil health and biodiversity
The use of selected industrial crops and the adoption of innovative cropping systems protect pollinators, enhance biodiversity at landscape level, remove carbon from the atmosphere and reduce soil erosion.
Europe's Marginal Lands
In this StoryMap we explain
how we define and mapped marginal lands for the current (2020) situation and for
the future (2050).
Supporting the European Green Deal
Supporting the UN Sustainable Development Goals
News
Mechanical harvesting of castor bean
17 November 2025
Last summer, as part of MIDAS activities, our partners CREA-IT and Novamont worked on several tests focused on the mechanical harvesting of castor plants, a
Webinar summary and slides – Guayule on marginal land
14 November 2025
On 12 November 2025, the MIDAS project hosted the webinar, “Guayule on Marginal Lands: Building Europe’s Value Chain for Sustainable Rubber and Bio-based products”. Five
2nd meeting of the Italian Regional Advisory Group
7 November 2025
Yesterday, in the vibrant setting of Ecomondo 2025 in Rimini, we held the second meeting of the Italian Regional Advisory Group (RAG) for the MIDAS
