2026: Advancing soil health across Europe: Business models, incentives and policy pathways for a sustainable transition

Luis Sánchez is Head of Sector at DG AGRI (Agriculture and Rural Development), Unit F.2 ‘Research and Innovation’, European Commission. He joined DG AGRI in January 2023 and coordinates the EU Mission Soil team. Luis is Agricultural Engineer and holds a PhD in the field of water and nutrient management in arable crops. Before joining the European Commission in 2017 (DG Research and Innovation, European Innovation Council), he worked for almost 20 years in agricultural policy and R&I in the Madrid Regional Government in technical and senior management positions.

Mirco Barbero is policy officer in soil protection and sustainable land use; he leads the Soil Team since June 2019 within the Unit Land use and management, Directorate-General Environment, European Commission.

Mirco has a degree in physics and has worked for a dozen of years in the private sector as responsible for the quality assurance of products and services. He has joined the Commission in 2005 where he worked mainly as team leader in internal audit, advising the management on how to improve performance, governance and risk management in several policy areas. He and his team are now fully involved in making the EU soil policy contribute significantly to the European Green Deal ambition.

Ennio Facq is a research associate at the Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (ILVO), working in the Social Sciences Unit as an agricultural engineer. His work focuses on the interface between agriculture, soil health, and policy, with particular attention to business models that support sustainable land management. He has been involved in several research projects at the European level, such as SoilValues and EJP Soil, contributing to interdisciplinary research on how soil health can be integrated into farming systems and supported through systemic changes.

Dr Caterina Guidi is a Legal and Policy Analyst in Climate Change and Biodiversity Protection at the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change, Risk Assessment and Adaptation Strategies Division in Venice (IT), where she is currently leading policy and incentive-related tasks in several Horizon projects, incl. InBestSoil, BIOservicES, Invest4Nature, FIREFLIES.  She supports the Italian Delegation at the UNFCCC negotiations for adaptation and is the EU lead negotiator for the Nairobi Work Programme. She holds a PhD from UNSW Law and Justice Faculty (AU), a Master Degree in Project Management for Sustainable Development from La Sapienza University (IT) and a Master Degree in Law from ALMA MATER STUDIORUM Bologna (IT). She had extensive international work experience in her field, incl. teaching Nature Resource Management Law and International Environmental Law at UNSW (AU), collaborating with ForestAlive (AU), FAO (IT) and EUBIA (BE).

Tassos Haniotis recently retired, after a 33-year career in the Commission, as the Director of Strategy, Simplification and Policy Analysis in the Directorate General for Agriculture of the European Commission. Tassos is Sustainable Productivity Adviser for the Forum for the Future of Agriculture and a Senior Guest Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. He previously held posts as Head of Unit in the Agricultural Policy Analysis and Perspectives unit and the Agricultural Trade Policy Analysis unit in the same Directorate General, as Member and subsequently Deputy Head of the Cabinet of former European Commissioner for Agriculture Franz Fischler (with respective responsibilities the preparation of the 2003 reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, and the agricultural chapter of the Doha WTO Round and the EU-Mercosur negotiations), and as the Agricultural Counsellor of the European Commission’s Delegation in the United States. He holds Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Agricultural Economics from the University of Georgia, USA, and a B.A. in Economics from the Athens University of Economics and Business, in his native Greece. Before joining the European Commission, he spent six months as a visiting Fellow at the Centre for European Agricultural Studies, Wye College, University of London, focusing on EU-US agricultural trade relations in the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations. He hold a Honorary Doctorate degree from the University of Thessaloniki. Active in the ag research community, he is a member of the International and European Associations of Ag Economics, the International Agricultural Trade Research Consortium, and the EU Nitrogen Expert Panel.

Hannes is a regenerative agriculturalist, industrial engineer for environmental technologies, consultant and project developer for regenerative land use. Following his studies of economics and engineering he worked several years in water and sanitation projects, financial management advisory and anticorruption projects in South- and East-Africa. This is where he started to develop deep interest for holistic approaches to regenerative land use. After his return to Germany and a Master degree in natural resources management he started a small consultancy in 2017, travelling all over Europe. Since 2020 he puts theory into practice as a farm manager and one of three core developers at Gut Haidehof, close to the city of Hamburg.

André Jurius is the owner of Ekoberderij de Lingehof, a 175-hectare biodynamic farm cultivating ten different crops. He is committed to implementing regenerative farming practices and is the co-founder of Lekker Lupine. His work introduced lupine to the Netherlands and aims to strengthen short food-supply chains. Alongside his partners, he is developing new lupine-based products for the market while building a cooperative system founded on shared principles and value creation for farmers.

Valentina Cristiana Materia is Associate Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Agri-food Systems at the Business Management and Organisation group of Wageningen University, The Netherlands. Her research focuses on how the adoption of socio-agroecological innovations can help small agrifood businesses – especially led by women entrepreneurs - transition and contribute to resilient and inclusive food systems. She is interested in aspects including sustainable business modelling, opportunities for upscaling, the role of socio-economic contexts. Her research covers the Global North and the Global South contexts.

Erik Mathijs is a professor at the faculty of bioscience engineering at KU Leuven and is also the vice-dean of education. He focuses mainly on questions regarding the transition into sustainable food economies, mainly questions on system innovations, how they emerge, what stands in their way and the development of tools and methods. As an agricultural economist and food system scientist, he is interested in the economics of sustainable soil management practices ('regenerative agriculture') and the protein transition (mainly reducing meat consumption).  He is also Associate Editor of Sustainability Science and Q-OPEN, Chair of the Working Group on Sustainable Food Consumption, SAPEA and Coordinator of the Mission Soil/Horizon Europe project SoilValues.

Julie Paquay is Head of European Public Affairs for Moët Hennessy (LVMH group), leading EU institutional engagement since 2022. With over 15 years’ experience in the FMCG sector, including heading Unilever's Brussels office and early work at Brussels-based consultancy Landmark Public Affairs (now part of Edelman)—Julie specializes in agriculture, environment, and trade policy. A graduate of the London School of Economics, ULB, and Leeds University, she is fluent in French and English and serves as a French Foreign Trade Advisor (Conseillère du Commerce Extérieur de la France) to the EU.

Emmanuel Petel is a policy officer at the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development (DG AGRI) at the European Commission. Currently, he is working on the integration of environmental concerns into the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), including soil health and carbon sequestration, and on promotion nature-based practices such as agroforestry, agroecology and regenerative agriculture.

Over the last decade, he has notably been involved in the design and implementation of certain relevant legal schemes (conditionality and greening scheme), financial instruments such as eco-scheme and upcoming agri-environment- climate actions in the future CAP 2028-2034.

As team leader, Emmanuel provided extensive support, in particular the national administrations to facilitate a proper enforcement of the different schemes. During the current programming period, he has contributed via an intensive dialogue with Member States, to the assessment of the national CAP Strategic Plans in the area of climate mitigation and soil protection.

Emmanuel works in synergy and close cooperation with other European services notably for the implementation of  a new EU soil policy especially as regards the soil monitoring law and the carbon removal and carbon farming.

Ana Rocha currently leads the Policy team at the ELO and follows policies affecting agriculture and forestry in Europe. She holds a degree in agricultural engineering, having studied in Portugal, Belgium and the Netherlands. She has consolidated professional experience in EU lobbying, representing the interests of European landowners and land managers for more than ten years, in Brussels and in London. She remains involved in a small family farm in Portugal.

Dr. Kato Van Ruymbeke is a researcher specialising in sustainable land management, with a focus on evaluating environmental and socio-economic performance through an ecosystem services perspective. During her PhD, she contributed to the Horizon 2020 LIFT project, assessing sustainable farm management practices across Europe. As a postdoctoral researcher, she expanded her work to forestry systems through the Horizon Europe CLIMB-FOREST project and currently coordinates the Horizon Europe SoilValues project, which explores sustainable business models for regenerative agriculture in Europe.

Gerald Schwarz is a researcher in the Department of Farm Economics at the Thünen Institute in Germany, where he has worked since 2009. With more than 25 years of research experience, Gerald's career spans leading institutions in Germany and the UK. He began as a doctoral researcher at Humboldt University of Berlin, then spent six years as a researcher at the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland, before returning to Humboldt University as a researcher in 2008. He joined the Thünen Institute in November 2009.

Dr. Bert Smit is a senior researcher with Wageningen Social & Economic Research (Institute of Wageningen University & Research) in the fields of entrepreneurship, CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) and sustainable arable farming. He has a background in agronomy and business economics. In the last 10 years, he has intensively been involved in soil health programmes like Slim Landgebruik (Smart Landuse),  EJP (European Joint Programme on) Soil and Soil Mission, especially the EU-project SoilValues and the Business Cluster. In such programmes, agronomic and economic expertise is combined in interaction with farmers and farmer cooperatives.

Jurgen Tack studied biology (marine ecology) at Brussels Free University where he also obtained his PhD in Sciences. Within the Framework of the Kenya Belgium Project in Marine Sciences (Coastal Farms Kenya) he developed a number of oyster farms along the Kenyan coast. In 2000 he joined the team of the Belgian Biodiversity Platform (Belgian Science Policy Office) where he was responsible for European and international science policy in the field of biodiversity and biodiversity related research. In 2007 he became the CEO of the Research Institute for Nature and Forest (a research organization under the umbrella of the Flemish Authority). In 2015 he became Secretary-General of the National Science Foundation (Flanders) In 2016 he took the position of Scientific Director at the European Landowners’ Organization (ELO), CEO at Landelijk Vlaanderen (Flemish Landowners’ Organisation) and CEO of the Aanspreekpunt Privaat Beheer Natuur en Bos (an advisory organ for private landowners on the management of nature and forest). In 2023 he became Secretary-General of the European Landowners Organisation (ELO). He coordinates several EU projects on private land conservation. On behalf of ELO he chairs the European Commission’s Large Carnivore Platform and acts as expert for the EU Biodiversity Platform and the EU Expert Group on Cultural Heritage.

Youssef Wang-Touri is a PhD candidate at Wageningen University with a background in sustainable agriculture and business sciences. His research focuses on the complex interrelationships between farm management, soil health, ecosystem services, and farm income. Within SoilValues, he developed a conceptual framework linking these dimensions and worked closely with participating farmers to explore how it can support their decision-making towards improved ecosystem services, soil health, and farm profitability.