The European Mission "A Soil Deal for Europe" promotes Living Labs as key instruments to accelerate the transition towards sustainable agricultural systems through stakeholder engagement, co-creation and real-world experimentation. While numerous Living Labs are being established across Europe, practical experience remains limited regarding how to identify, support and evaluate diverse innovation initiatives at territorial scale.
This contribution presents the approach developed within the French Living Lab located in the Landes (South-West France), where twelve agricultural experimentation projects involving 25 farms has been funded and supported to address soil health challenges under real farming conditions. The projects cover a diversity of production systems and innovation pathways, including practices aimed at improving soil organic matter, biodiversity, water regulation, resilience to climatic stresses and overall soil functionality.
This work examines the Living Lab as an innovation ecosystem. We describe the process used to engage stakeholders, identify local priorities, select original ideas, allocate resources and establish a common framework for monitoring and knowledge exchange. Attention is given to the challenge of creating coherence across heterogeneous experiments while preserving the flexibility required to respond to local pedoclimatic and socio-economic contexts.
The French Landes Living Lab provides an opportunity to explore how a portfolio-based approach can generate learning beyond individual experiments. By connecting projects through shared objectives, common indicators and collective reflection processes, the Living Lab aims to transform innovations into transferable / replicable knowledge capable of supporting territorial-scale transitions.
Preliminary observations highlight the value of farmer-driven experimentation, multi-actor governance and continuous interaction between researchers, advisors and practitioners. The experience also reveals important challenges related to monitoring harmonization, scaling-up successful practices and balancing scientific robustness with operational feasibility.
The contribution offers practical lessons for other European Living Labs seeking to move from isolated demonstration projects towards coordinated territorial innovation strategies that support the long-term objectives of soil health restoration and sustainable land management.

The European Mission "A Soil Deal for Europe" highlights the need for robust, scalable and operational indicators capable of supporting soil health assessment across diverse agricultural systems. While physical and chemical soil properties are routinely monitored, biological indicators remain underused despite their central role in ecosystem functioning and agricultural sustainability.
This study presents the establishment of a biological soil health baseline within the French Living Lab located in the Landes (South-West France). A total of 135 soil samples were collected across 25 farms representing a diversity of agricultural systems and pedoclimatic conditions. Three complementary biological indicators were assessed: total microbial abundance, relative microbial biodiversity and dehydrogenase activity as a proxy for overall microbial metabolic activity.
The objective was not only to characterize the current biological status of soils across the territory, but also to evaluate the potential of combining these indicators into an operational framework for long-term soil health monitoring within a Living Lab context. Attention was given to the relationships among community size, biodiversity and biological activity, as well as to the variability observed between farms and management contexts.
Results reveal substantial spatial heterogeneity across the territory, highlighting the diversity of biological soil conditions encountered under real farming situations. Preliminary analyses indicate that microbial abundance, biodiversity and enzymatic activity provide complementary rather than redundant information, suggesting that multiple biological dimensions should be considered when assessing soil health. The data further demonstrate the feasibility of deploying harmonized biological monitoring at territorial scale and provide a reference point against which future changes associated with soil health interventions can be evaluated.
Beyond the characterization of current conditions, this work contributes to ongoing efforts to identify practical biological indicators for soil health assessment and monitoring. The baseline established through this study will support the evaluation of future innovations implemented within the Living Lab and offers a framework that could be replicated in other European territories engaged in the transition towards healthy soils.