Embracing innovation in agriculture by peer-to-peer learning via on farm-demonstrations and cost-benefit analysis

Expected Outcome:

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• enhanced peer-to-peer learning leads to widespread sharing and uptake of the innovative solutions by farmers across the EU, thereby improving competitiveness, sustainability and resilience of the agricultural sector;
• the costs and benefits of applying innovative solutions in real context are better understood by farmers, advisors and other AKIS actors across the EU.

Scope:

On-farm demonstrations can be crucial for enabling innovation uptake in agriculture, as they provide a platform for showcasing and evaluating new practices, but also serve as an effective avenue for peer-to-peer (or farmer to farmer) learning, leading to skill empowerment, higher adoption rates and increased practice change compared to the traditional top-down approaches. By engaging in on-farm demonstrations, farmers are better positioned to assess the applicability of innovative practices or tools. Complementing on-farm demonstrations with comprehensive cost-benefit analyses further empowers farmers, allowing them to quantitively evaluate the costs and benefits associated with the adoption of new solutions/practices. This approach should not only promote informed decision-making but also accelerate the uptake and integration of innovative practices across the agricultural sector. Proposals should either address Area A: Crop production systems, or Area B: Livestock and mixed production systems. The area (A or B) should be clearly indicated in the proposal.

Proposals should:

• develop objective benchmarking criteria to select agricultural innovations, considering factors such as their impact, ease of implementation, scalability and applicability across different agricultural systems;
• develop and apply a standardised methodology to assess the economic, environmental (including biodiversity effects), and social impacts of adopting these innovations, with focus on the analysis of the costs and benefits for the practitioners;
• screen and select promising practice-oriented innovative solutions developed by research and innovation projects in the area of agriculture to be tested on-farm and by farmers, on the basis of the objective benchmarking criteria;
• test, validate and showcase the innovative solutions in real conditions directly on- farms across different geographic realities in real conditions, and thoroughly analyse their costs and benefits for the practitioners. It is essential that proposals ensure complementarity and cooperation with existing and future peer-to-peer and on-farm demo activities in their planning and avoid overlaps and repetitions, ensuring geographical coverage of the EU;
• develop and widely share learning materials and courses, and incentivise peer-to-peer learning by organising, e.g., cross-border field visits and farmer-centred webinars presenting the most effective innovative solutions to farmers and advisors.

Proposals must implement the multi-actor approach, with a consortium based on a balanced mix of relevant actors with complementary knowledge clearly activating advisors, farmers and/or foresters and/or rural actors. To effectively support the transition of innovations into the market, the participation of startups and SMEs is strongly encouraged.

Proposals may provide financial support to third parties (FSTP) to, for instance, develop, test and demonstrate innovative measures. A maximum of 30% of the EU funding should be allocated to this purpose. Particular efforts^[1] in outreach and communication should be made by the project to help publicise these calls to the stakeholder targeted as beneficiaries of the support.

This topic should involve the effective contribution of social sciences and humanities (SSH) disciplines.

The projects under this topic are relevant to the EU policies related to the EU Vision for Agriculture and Food and the cross-cutting objective of the common agricultural policy (CAP) to enhance knowledge flows and the adoption of innovation among AKIS^[2] actors, in particular advisory services and end-users^[3].

[1] activities that go beyond the minimum requirements set out in General Annex B.

[2] AKIS is defined in Article 3(9) of the Regulation (EU) 2021/2115.

[3] An “(end-)user” of R&I result(s) is a person who is him/herself putting the results into practice (i.e. practitioner); depending on the area selected, end-users could be farmers and/or other rural actors, or both of them.