ExpectedOutcome:
A successful proposal will support the objectives of the European Green Deal, and notably its farm to fork and biodiversity strategies, and the sustainable carbon cycle communication, to transition to fair, healthy, climate and environmentally-friendly food systems from primary production to consumption, in particular the objective to promote organic farming in Europe. Activities will support the implementation of the action plan on the development of organic production[1] and of the common agricultural policy (CAP).
The successful proposal will focus on exchanges between farm advisors across the EU in order to increase the speed of knowledge creation and sharing, capacity building, demonstration of innovative solutions in organic farming, as well as helping to bring them into practice in order to accelerate adoption of these solutions.
Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following outcomes:
- Accelerated progress towards achieving the policy objectives linked to the farm to fork strategy’s target on organic farming, and in particular those identified under the Action Plan on the Development of Organic Production, as well as the new CAP;
- Supported implementation in Member States of the CAP’s 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];
- Enhanced interactions among advisors and other relevant actors in the EU and Associated Countries conducive to a strengthened research and innovation ecosystem for organic farming;
- Increased provision of supporting services and materials that facilitate the conversion to and upscaling of organic farming;
- Accelerated introduction, spread and implementation in practice of innovative solutions related to organic farming leading to improved production methods of organic farms.
Scope:
Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS)[3], in which advisors play a central role, are key drivers to speed up innovation and the uptake of research results by farmers. Transformative changes such as the ones called for by the farm to fork strategy, are dynamic and knowledge-intensive processes that require appropriate governance of AKIS actors. Advisors play a key role in steering and influencing farmers’ decisions. A novelty in the post-2020 CAP plans[4] is that advisors must be integrated within the Member States’ AKIS, and that the scope of their actions has become much broader. Advisors must be able to cover the economic, environmental and social domains, as well as being up-to-date on scientific and innovation developments. They should be able to translate this knowledge into concrete opportunities for the end users, and adapt those to specific local circumstances.
This topic focuses on the important role that advisors can play in relation to boosting organic farming towards reaching the target of at least 25% of the EU's agricultural land under organic farming by 2030. In particular, advisors can play a key role in encouraging conversion to organic farming and in facilitating this process to farmers, and overall in tackling the challenges of organic farming. In this context, advisors are in a good position to provide hands-on training to organic farmers, to inspire new and incoming farmers or farms at the cross-roads of intergenerational renewal, to connect with education and ensure broad communication, to support peer-to-peer consulting, and to develop on-farm demonstrations.
Proposals should set up an EU advisory network dedicated to organic farming, covering both organic plant production systems and organic animal husbandry. The network should involve participants from at least 20 EU Member States, including countries in which the organic sector is more developed and less developed. In this context, proposals should:
- Connect farm advisors across the EU , with a view to sharing experiences on how to best tackle the main issues of the sector.
- Undertake knowledge, best practice and innovation exchange activities that support Member States in making the best use of the possibilities offered by the new CAP to support their national organic sector.
- Fill gaps on emerging advisory topics beyond the classical sectorial advice, in particular in view of the new obligation for Member States to integrate advisors within their AKIS.
- Serve as a platform to bring stakeholders together to discuss challenges and solutions to practical organic farming problems, such as bottlenecks, lock-ins, power imbalances, normative aspects, lack of consumer buy-in or trust, inequalities between Member States, etc.;
- Provide overall support related to knowledge creation, organisation and sharing. This could include peer-to-peer counselling, master classes, (digital) advice modules, communication and education materials, etc.
- Promote the sharing of effective and novel approaches that are sustainable in terms of economic, environmental and social aspects.
- Create added value by ensuring stronger links between research, education, advisors and farming practice and encouraging the wider use of available knowledge across the EU.
- Spread ready-to-use innovative solutions to practitioners and ensuring communication to the scientific community of research needs from practice.
- Taking strong account of cost-benefit elements, collect and document good examples of connecting farmers, intermediates and consumers in Member States to be able to take into account financial aspects and local conditions. Select the best practices, and extract lessons about the key success factors, possible quick wins and make them available for (local) exploitation.
- Promote the integration of the advisors of the EU advisory network on organic farming into their Member State’s AKIS.
- Explore if the activities of the EU advisory network on organic farming can be up scaled at the level of a number of Member States under a cooperative format. Seek if common tools can be created to incentivise the implementation of the learnings from this project.
- Organise training activities for new advisors to be integrated in the network during the course of the project.
- In the EU advisory network, use local AKIS connections which can more accurately interpret the national/regional contexts to help develop the best solutions for that Member State or region. Use the support of the Member States’ knowledge and innovation experts of the SCAR-AKIS Strategic Working Group and of the SCAR Agroecology Strategic Working Group[5] to discuss project strategy and progress in the various stages of the project.
Outcomes should be spread beyond the organic farming communities and reach also farmers involved in conventional, carbon, low-input, circular agriculture or agroecology. Proposals must implement the multi-actor approach, with a majority of partners being organic farming advisors with solid field experience. Proposals should capitalise and build on the outputs of relevant EIP-AGRI Operational Groups and EIP-AGRI networking activities, as well as those of the Horizon 2020 Thematic Networks related to organic farming. Proposals should dedicate a task, appropriate resources and a plan on how they will ensure synergy with and take into consideration the results of other initiatives under Horizon Europe, including the projects selected under the topics HORIZON-CL6-2021-FARM2FORK-01-01: ‘Reaching the farm to fork target: R&I scenarios for boosting organic farming and organic aquaculture in Europe’, and HORIZON-CL6-2021-BIODIV-01-14: ‘Fostering organic crop breeding’ in the Horizon Europe Work Programme 2021-2022. Proposals should also dedicate appropriate resources to ensure synergies with the activities carried out by projects selected under the following topics in this work programme: HORIZON-CL6-2024-FARM2FORK-02-1-two-stage: ‘Increasing the availability and use of non-contentious inputs in organic farming’, and HORIZON-CL6-2023-FARM2FORK: ‘Improving yields in organic cropping systems’, HORIZON-CL6-2023-CLIMATE-01-5: ‘Pilot network of climate-positive organic farms’, as well as coherence and synergies with the activities of the future partnership ‘Accelerating farming systems transition: agroecology living labs and research infrastructures’. Proposals should provide all outcomes and materials to the European Innovation Partnership 'Agricultural Productivity and Sustainability' (EIP-AGRI), including in the common 'practice abstract' format for EU wide dissemination, as well as to national/regional/local AKIS channels and to the EU-wide interactive knowledge reservoir (HORIZON-CL6-2021-GOVERNANCE-01-24) in the requested formats.
[1]https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52021DC0141R%2801%29
[2]Art 5 CAP post 2020 proposal.
[3]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).
[4]Art 13(2) of the post 2020 CAP regulation.
[5]https://scar-europe.org/agroecology-mission-and-aims
