ExpectedOutcome:
In support of the European Green Deal, the EU climate policy, the common agricultural policy (CAP) and the farm to fork strategy objectives and targets, the successful proposals will focus on knowledge sharing in a language that is easy to understand and targeted to farmers and foresters. They will address the necessity of primary producers for impartial and tailored knowledge on the management choices related to the needs, challenges or opportunities they experience. They will also speed up innovation and the uptake of results, and will be key to improving sustainability. They will contribute to effective Agriculture Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS[1]), thereby adding value to the knowledge and cost-effectiveness of innovative practices and techniques in and across primary production sectors, food and bioeconomy systems, and lead to more informed and engaged stakeholders and users of project results.
Despite the continued funding of scientific projects, new knowledge, innovative ideas and methods from practice are not shared and adopted. Often the research findings are not integrated into agricultural and forestry practice. Proposals, acting at EU level to remedy this situation, are essential because national and sectoral AKISs are insufficiently connected and organised to fully meet the challenge of intensifying thematic cooperation between researchers, advisors and farmers/foresters. This exchange of knowledge will foster economically viable and sustainable agriculture and forestry and build trust between the main AKIS actors.
Project results are expected to contribute to the following outcomes:
- Support the implementation of the cross-cutting objective of modernising the sector by fostering and sharing of knowledge, innovation and digitalisation in agriculture and rural areas, and encouraging their uptake[2], as well as European Green Deal and farm to fork objectives.
- Collection and distribution of easily accessible practice-oriented knowledge on the thematic area chosen, in particular the existing best practices and research findings that are ready to be put into practice.
- Maintenance of the practical knowledge for the long-term – beyond the project period – in particular by using the main trusted dissemination channels that farmers/foresters most often consult.
- Increased flow of practical information between farmers/foresters in the EU in a geographically balanced way, creating spill-overs and taking account of the differences between territories.
- Greater user acceptance of collected solutions and a more intensive dissemination of existing knowledge, by connecting actors, policies, projects and instruments to speed up innovation and promote the faster and wider co-creation and transposition of innovative solutions into practice.
Scope:
Proposals should address the following activities:
- Tackle the most urgent needs of farmers and/or foresters related to biodiversity, including those relevant for climate change mitigation and adaptation, by summarising, sharing and presenting - in a language that is easy to understand and is targeted to farmers and foresters – the existing best practices and research findings that are ready to be put into practice, but not sufficiently known or used by practitioners. The specific objectives of the networks can be chosen in a 'bottom-up' way on condition that they tackle biodiversity issues.
- The network should cover at least the following aspects:
- Incentives from farmers and foresters to improve biodiversity on farms/forests or across farms/forests in a collaborative way
- EU requirements for biodiversity protection in agricultural and forest areas (Birds and Habitats Directives).
- Compile a comprehensive description of the state of current farming practices on biodiversity, including those relevant for climate mitigation or adaptation, to explain the added value of the proposal and the relevance of the theme.
- Proposals should focus on the cost/benefit aspects of the practices collected and summarised, and clarify how the project avoids duplication with ongoing or completed projects and networks.
- Deliver an extensive range of useful, applicable and appealing end-user material for farmers and foresters. This info should be easy to access and understand, making use of audio-visual material wherever possible, including also materials serving education and training;
- This range of material should feed into the existing dissemination channels most consulted by farmers and foresters in their countries.
- As many “practice abstracts” in the common EIP-AGRI format as possible, as well as other type of materials should be provided to the European Innovation Partnership (EIP-AGRI) 'Agricultural Productivity and Sustainability', as well as to national/regional/local AKIS channels and to the EU-wide interactive knowledge reservoir (HORIZON-CL6-2021-GOVERNANCE-01-24);
- Besides giving the details on the EIP Operational Groups whose involvement is strongly recommended[3], wherever possible and relevant to biodiversity, provide also details on how further synergies will be built with future EIP Operational Groups and interactive innovation groups operating in the context of the EIP-AGRI.
- Proposals must implement the 'multi-actor approach', with a consortium based on a balanced mix of actors with complementary knowledge clearly building on farmers/foresters, farmers' groups and advisors; and run for a minimum of 3 years.
- In order to better reach and capture knowledge from the targeted farmers/foresters, the networks may organise 'cross-fertilisation' through sub-networks covering, for example, a region, a language or a production system.
[1]AKIS means the organisation and knowledge flows between persons, organisations and institutions who use and produce knowledge for agriculture and interrelated fields (Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation).
[2]Art 5 of the post 2020 CAP regulation.
[3]According to the requirements of the multi-actor approach.
