does not apply; see above

ClimateSmartAdvisors is a pan-European multi-actor network covering 27 countries. Its aim is to boost the EU agricultural advisory community, leading to an acceleration of the adoption of climate smart (CS) farming practices by the wider farming community within and across EU AKISs. To reach this objective, ClimateSmartAdvisors focuses on the crucial role of advisors in the development and dissemination of CS innovations and practices. The project will organize activities focusing on strengthening the advisors’ capacity in providing CS advice and boosting the advisors’ role in the transition towards CS farming through their involvement in innovation projects, CS-AKIS, and EU projects and initiatives. A number of complementary activities are developed to strengthen the CS advisory capacity of the EU advisory community: 1) an EU-wide network of 260 advisory Communities of Practice (CoP) to support the development of 1500 advisors will form the core of CS knowledge exchange; 2) 140 advisors will receive expert training on selected topics, relevant for their context and for facilitating a CoP; 3) CoPs will internationally exchange knowledge on 12 thematic areas; 4) a knowledge repository will provide advisors with CS tools, practices and approaches developed in the ClimateFarmDemo project and further expanded in ClimateSmartAdvisors, 5) monitoring, evaluation and learning activities will capitalize lessons learned in and outside the project. Activities to boost the advisors role in the CS transition include: 1) connecting to local and EU (multi-actor innovation) projects, initiatives, AKIS actors, and policy makers to clarify and address joint needs, challenges and lessons learned, 2) the set-up of Co-Design Innovation Experiments to learn on how to strengthen the advisors’ role in innovation processes. Finally, to accelerate the wide spread of results, an ambitious dissemination, exploitation and communication strategy will be deployed at EU and national levels.

AgriLink aims to stimulate sustainability transitions in European agriculture through better understanding the roles played by farm advice in farmer decision-making. To this end, AgriLink will analyse and improve the role of farmer advice in 8 innovation areas that combine challenges identified in the “Strategic Approach to EU Agricultural Research & Innovation”. AgriLink builds on the premise that the full range of advice-providing organisations need to be included in the assessment of service provision and innovation adoption. The methodology combines theoretical insights with cutting edge research methods within a multi-actor, transdisciplinary approach. It draws on ‘micro-AKIS’ (individuals and organisations from whom farmers seek services and exchange knowledge with) analysis in 26 focus regions, sociotechnical scenario development and ‘living laboratories’ where farmers, advisors and researchers work together. Research in focus regions will provide insight in farmers’ micro-AKIS, advisory suppliers’ business models, and regional farm advisory systems. This will feed an assessment of the efficacy of governance of farm-advice-research interactions across Europe. Newly developed advisory methods and new forms of research-practice interaction will be validated and further developed in Living Laboratories. A socio-technical scenario method will be used to explore, jointly with stakeholders, transition pathways towards more sustainable agriculture. Crucially, AgriLink builds on insights and experiences from both research and practice. The consortium consists of researchers from different disciplines (institutional economics, innovation studies, AKIS studies, sociology of networks), as well as of advisors (from public, private and farmer-based organisations) from across the EU. Actors from advisory services will be active in the validation and dissemination of results, to ensure that all project findings are both scientifically sound and practically useful.