Land managers combine man-made resources with natural resources to produce marketable products like food, feed, fiber and wood, but at the same time produce ecosystem services that are generally not marketed or compensated. However, land managers generally have little incentive to invest in healthy soils, as they cannot sufficiently capture the value generated by these ecosystem services. SoilValues aims to contribute to the conditions for developing successful soil health business models. These are models in which land managers make production decisions that result in higher levels of soil-based ecosystem services (SES) and in which they are paid for the non-marketed services they generate. In order for such business models to function, three important conditions need to be fulfilled: (1) the outcomes of SES need to be measured, thus requiring knowledge, indicators and models, (2) the data and information generated by these indicators and models need to be exchanged to facilitate monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV), and (3) all these activities should be governed by an appropriate institutional framework consisting of the necessary legislation, standards and incentive schemes. To enhance the conditions for developing successful soil health business models, SoilValues will: (1) provide a comprehensive assessment framework addressing all factors influencing the development of business models for investing in soil health, (2) establish 6 testing grounds across Europe to test and improve emerging and designing new soil health business models, (3) establish 12 communities of practice of land managers, value chain actors, investors and public authorities for soil health business models, (4) design a comprehensive toolbox of incentives and policy recommendations to facilitate soil health business models and (5) raise awareness and exchange knowledge for soil health business models.

Ecological approaches to farming practices are gaining interest across Europe. As this interest grows there is a pressing need to assess the potential contributions these practices may make, the contexts in which they function and their attractiveness to farmers as potential adopters. In particular, ecological agriculture must be assessed against the aim of promoting the improved performance and sustainability of farms, rural environment, rural societies and economies, together. The overall goal of LIFT is to identify the potentiel benefits of the adoption of ecological farming in the European Union (EU) and to understand how socio-economic and policy factors impact the adoption, performance and sustainability of ecological farming at various scales, from the level of the single farm to that of a territory. To meet this goal, LIFT will assess the determinants of adoption of ecological approaches, and evaluate the performance and overall sustainability of these approaches in comparison to more conventional agriculture across a range of farm systems and geographic scales. LIFT will also develop new private arrangements and policy instruments that could improve the adoption and subsequent performance and sustainability of the rural nexus. For this, LIFT will suggest an innovative framework for multi-scale sustainability assessment aimed at identifying critical paths toward the adoption of ecological approaches to enhance public goods and ecosystem services delivery. This will be achieved through the integration of transdisciplinary scientific knowledge and stakeholder expertise to co-develop innovative decision-support tools. The project will inform and support EU priorities relating to agriculture and the environment in order to promote the performance and sustainability of the combined rural system. At least 30 case studies will be performed in order to reflect the enormous variety in the socio-economic and bio-physical conditions for agriculture across the EU.

The vision of FoSSNet is a strengthened and deepened academic network to support a new Knowledge and Innovation governance structure for Europes food system. A new structure is needed as the current Knowledge and Innovation system in the European Research Area is insufficient to address the emerging challenges of nourishing the European food system in a healthy, sustainable and fair way. The aim of FoSSNet is twofold, on one hand to establish a permanent pan-European network for Food System Science and on the other hand to advance inter- and transdisciplinary Food System Science and education. This will contribute directly to the farm to fork objectives and FOOD2030 priorities. Developing the network and advancing Food Systems Science and education will be underpinned by an inclusive approach to ensure engagement of all relevant disciplines, researchers and non-academic actors in advancing Food System Science. In order to reach the vision and aim, FoSSNet will 1) develop a conceptual framework and a process for developing food system transformation pathways to create a common language and understanding among food system thinkers, 2) establish, mobilise and consolidate an inclusive inter- and transdisciplinary pan-European academic network for food systems science to bring European food systems scientists and the science institutions together, 3) enhance inclusivity of the Knowledge and Innovation system for a sustainability transformation of EU food systems by addressing sensitivities to power relations and inequities that pervade food systems and contested transformation processes, 4) co-produce research for sustainable food system transformation to remove existing barriers to interdisciplinarity in food system science, 5) build food systems capability through an academy and curricula to ensure the impact of future food system thinkers and 6) create scientific, economic and societal impact by ensuring sustainability of the network.

SWIFT’s overall objective is to foster transitions towards sustainable, balanced and inclusive development of rural areas in Europe by favouring the deployment of women-led innovations (WLI) acting for change in agriculture, promoting gender equality in rural areas from an intersectional, feminist and human rights-based perspective. SWIFT pursues this by engaging in applied feminist innovation studies research better reflecting feminist and human-rights based approaches. This will enable to facilitate a change of framing in agriculture to address the social realities that perpetuate inequalities. Women, in all of their diversity, play a central role in agriculture and food systems. Their knowledge, skills, labour and leadership, however, are frequently invisible and undervalued. At present, the European agricultural sector is characterized by high levels of inequality. The multiple barriers to gender equality in European agriculture are socio-cultural, economic and political, and perpetuate women’s inequality within the mutually constituting ‘productive’ sphere of farming outputs and in the ‘reproductive’ sphere of unpaid and undervalued labour that occurs on the farm, in the family and community. Some examples include i) unequal access to land and productive resources, that shape and limit women’s participation in agriculture, constructing gender roles and identities and resulting, among other things, in ii) women under-representation in agricultural organizations and holding very few decision-making positions; iii) current agricultural education and training that reinforce stereotypes about farming as a male activity and which do not encourage young women to pursue agricultural careers; iv) social closure, characterised by interactional dynamics of discrimination, exclusion and/or harassment, that lead to women being discouraged from taking up tasks or acquiring relevant farming skills. The structural gender inequalities in agriculture are acutely felt by social groups that experience multiple and intersecting forms of oppression, including migrant farmworkers and LGBTIQ+ farmers. These intersecting forms of discrimination have not yet been extensively documented, however, they constitute significant barriers to transformative change in rural areas in Europe. One of the main difficulties for gender mainstreaming in agricultural policies is the framing of food. The EU’s primary commitment to purely economic measures of viability of farming businesses reflects the idea of food as a commodity that does not include the forms of farming that tend to be led by women. The framing of food as a commodity also fails to capture the commitments that have been made to the realisation of the right to adequate food. SWIFT will contribute to gender mainstreaming in agricultural and food policies by providing theoretical and practical tools (feminist farm viability indicators and Gender responsive budgeting in policies) to favor a change of framing in those policies that will facilitate the development and implementation of alternative framings of food. Methodologically, SWIFT adopts a feminist, human rights-based, participatory and inclusive research methodology that applies an intersectional perspective, thereby rendering visible diverse experiences of inequality and giving a voice to those who are most marginalised. SWIFT aims to reinforce and amplify innovations led by marginalised actors to confront unequal social, economic and political structures in European agricultural and food systems. We defined WLI in agriculture as grassroots innovations built to challenge structural inequalities in agriculture in rural areas. Many of the WLI that are the focus of SWIFT have emerged under the broad umbrella of alternative food networks and have demands connected to the human right to adequate food. Through the analysis of WLI, SWIFT will study if and how agroecological approaches to food systems can promote gender equality in r

Unsustainable agricultural practices are major drivers affecting habitat and species diversity in agricultural landscapes of the EU. However, peatland, grassland, and species associated with agriculture are of most concern. The ongoing negative impacts of unsustainable agricultural practices emphasize the need for a fully integrated approach between the EU 2030 Biodiversity and Farm to Fork Strategies. Supporting the EC`s ambition of enhancing biodiversity of agricultural landscapes advanced systems are required to monitor biodiversity features and their changes over time and in space. Such biodiversity monitoring systems will support implementation of result-based policies in the European agricultural landscapes. The BioMonitor4CAP project will design advanced biodiversity monitoring systems mainly assessing diversity of targeted species and habitats to be tested, calibrated, and demonstrated in five European regions representing the major agro-ecological regions of the EU and one region in Peru representing one of the global biodiversity hot spots. The project will combine classical indicator systems that are part of the European monitoring framework (e.g. Farmland Bird Index) with various indicator systems mostly recently developed and applied in form of standalone systems: i) new indicator species (e.g. grasshopper), ii) genetic diversity (eDNA), iii) on-site sensors (e.g. wing beat frequency, acoustic sounds), iv) functional diversity (e.g. pollinators), and iv) various spatial measures. Supporting development and implementation of revised agricultural policies and ensuring rural development the project will involve among multiple stakeholder groups particularly farmers, conservationists, and service provides as the value and/or marketability of public and/or private goods delivered through maintained and enhanced biodiversity and related monitoring systems are hardly understood.