Webinar: Cultivating Bio-Based Industrial Feedstock in Marginal Lands

MarginUp! invites you to its first webinar, “Cultivating Bio-Based Industrial Feedstock in Marginal Lands,” opening a new series dedicated to sustainable, circular feedstock production on marginal lands. The session brings together project partners and external experts to share best practices for biomass product optimisation, market drivers and roadmaps for scaling up, plus first results from the Greek and Swedish use cases and insights from the MIDAS project.

Agenda 

Time	Session
10 min	Introduction by the moderator
10 min	Best practices for the optimisation of biomass products — ATB
10 min	Market drivers and roadmap for scaling up — Clara Amaro, INNOMINE
10 min	Q&A
10 min	Greek use case — Theodora Kalea, CluBE
10 min	Swedish use case — Susanne Paulrud, RISE
10 min	MIDAS Project — Centre for Renewable Energy Sources and Saving
20 min	Q&A

Who should attend: Researchers, academia, farmers, bio-based industries, civil society, education and training providers, and policymakers — anyone active in, or curious about, the replication network for marginal land use.

A webinar series running through the autumn 

This first session opens a wider series that will continue over the coming weeks, sharing good practices, lessons learned and replicable examples for sustainable circular feedstock production on marginal lands. Across its sessions, the series will address: 

• Assessment of use cases and value chains 

• Marginal land conservation, industrial crops and farming practices 

• Business models for bio-based value chains 

• Biodiversity guidelines 

• Policy frameworks  

Further sessions will move on to value chains and business cases, and to environmental, socioeconomic and policy dimensions of marginal land use, with further use cases from Germany, Hungary and Spain, and insights from partner projects SustainCrop and NEXRUR. Registration for these follow-up sessions will open shortly. 

Questions about the webinar series? Contact the organisers at Greenovate! Europe: p.rembe@greenovate-europe.eu 

About MarginUp! 

MarginUp! is a European research project working with stakeholders to increase farming system resilience and enhance biodiversity by cultivating biodiversity-friendly, non-food crops for bio-based products. Rather than competing with food production, the project identifies marginal land suited to low-impact cultivation and develops sustainable, circular value chains that turn what grows there into bioenergy, organic fertilisers, construction materials, cosmetics and more. 

These findings come from five full-scale use cases across Europe — Germany, Greece, Hungary, Spain and Sweden — complemented by case studies in Argentina and South Africa. Together, they are building a picture of how marginal lands can be optimised for biomass production and biodiversity enhancement at the same time, striking a balance between productivity and ecosystem health.