"<< Background >>""M.O.R.E. BIO - Mobilizing Organizations and Resources for youth Education in the BIO agriculture sector"" is a project implemented by the Mobility Consortium promoted by the Italian Association of Organic Agriculture (AIAB) which originated from the observation that organic farming in Italy, despite the growth in the number of operators and the increase in consumption, is a sector that needs to be promoted and supported, especially considering the issues of sustainability and environmental resilience, with 90% of Italian municipalities at hydrogeological risk. The Consortium has aimed to respond to several challenges that prevent the complete development of the sector, such as the difficulty of operators to be competitive at international level, due to the lack of access to know-how, and the lack of professionals with innovative skills related to production, management and marketing of Bio products, due to a training gap within the secondary education and the labour market, as underlined by the ""National Strategic Plan for the development of the biological system"" of MIPAAF and even more by the Italian Recovery Plan, in particular following the upheavals of the organic sector that occurred with the Covid-19 emergency.<< Objectives >>The project ""M.O.R.E. BIO"" has achieved the following objectives:1. To adopt a multi-stakeholder approach to the Organic sector: The Consortium led by AIAB was composed of its Regional Associations, Bio-operators, the Municipality of Gerace, VET Schools with ""Agriculture"" and ""Administration, Finance and Marketing"" Curricula and Social-Economic Secondary Schools, research centres and professional associations;2. To Encourage the employments in the Bio sector promoting European in-mobility training of new-graduates;3. To address the Educational Offer of secondary and VET schools towards Organic Agriculture, encouraging the creation of new curricula in the fields and their European dimension;4. To promote the dissemination of innovative European skills, focusing on self-entrepreneurship, in the fields of production, management and marketing of Bio products;5. To support the reproduction of Bio-based models, as instruments of economic and environmental subsistence and resilience for Municipal Authorities excluded from the dominant production model;6. To Promote the organic farming model, using the project and Erasmus+ as mobilising tools.<< Implementation >>Thanks to the ""M.O.R.E. BIO"" project started on 10/01/2021, it was possible to carry out Erasmus-Pro internships in Spain, France, Ireland and Belgium lasting 122 days (including 2 days of travel) addressed to 100 new graduates with a degree obtained in the fields of ""Agriculture"", ""Administration, Finance and Marketing"" and ""Social-Economics "". The participants were welcomed by companies active in the field of production, management and marketing of Bio products, which allowed the acquisition of knowledge, skills and competences related to the professional figures with EQF4 of:-Food designer;-Organization and Management of the production process Technician;-Strategic Marketing Technician.The Covid-19 emergency posed some problems to the realization of the project, so it was necessary to request an extension of the activities to the INAPP Agency that allowed to implement all the activities initially set by the Consortium and to achieve goals and final results, thanks to an extension of 4 months (the initial end date was scheduled for 30/09/2022, then postponed to 01/01/2023).<< Results >>The final evaluation, carried out by the Consortium, reported the important results and impacts deriving from the project ""M.O.R.E. BIO"":-85,42% of participants acquired professional skills in the production, management and marketing of organic products;-96,88% of learners strengthened their foreign language skills (English, French and Spanish); -77% of learners had the opportunity to meet new people, while 87,50% acquired a greater awareness of their skills, abilities and professionalism, and the intercultural awareness skills (94,29%). Such new professional background is already producing occupational impacts on the beneficiaries: a participant has already been included in the host foreign company and 82,99% of new-graduates has enhance their future employability.Also, the impacts on the Consortium and on project partners have been significant, thanks to the exchange of know-how and best practices of bio-agriculture and the increase of the international dimension of each one."

The overall aim of the thematic network ‘OK-Net Arable’ is to improve the exchange of innovative and traditional knowledge among farmers, farm advisers and scientists to increase productivity and quality in organic arable cropping all over Europe, in order to satisfy future market demand. To achieve this, 'OK-Net Arable' has three specific objectives: 1) to create a European network of well-functioning farmer innovation groups representing the best examples of co-innovation by farmers and researchers. The network of farmer innovation groups will serve to exchange experiences in the area of arable crop production and test the innovative end-user and education material developed in the project; 2) to digest and synthesize the considerable knowledge available from the reservoir of scientific and practical knowledge in the area of organic arable farming and to identify the best methodology in learning and knowledge exchange. Based on this easily understandable education and end-user material will be developed; 3) to create a platform for knowledge exchange across Europe unique in organic farming, offering both innovative education and end-user material as well as offering opportunities for farmer-to-farmer, advisor-to-advisor or researcher-to-advisor-to-farmer learning. The multi-actor approach is prominent in this proposal: (1) at EU level with scientific partners and farmers' associations jointly coordinating the work packages; (2) on the local level with farmers, farm advisors and scientists cooperating in farmer innovation groups. The whole consortium covers in total 13 countries from all corners of Europe giving a well-balanced representation of different climate, geographical and socio-economic conditions.

Design Do and Leani it- project developed an experimental development study course with video, tools and guidebook based on education used in Riveria, but modified and developed futher to be suitable for all partners and VET Europe wide. Italian, Finnish, Belgium, Welch and Spanish partners (8), local companies and work life collaborated to improve the quality of work, services and competences needed in the future! The partners, but also to the students and other teachers/workers locally were supported by project manager of Riveria to do experiments and to use lean thinking methods is daily actions. We had 2 project meetings, 5 workshops and local, national and international dissemination events. There were three goals to achieve:- The first was to enhance collaboration of the companies/other organizations and VET organization. Tools were developed and tested in practice, also students and teachers have used tools and cases were solved in companies. Collaboration based on sharing the expertise to each other and creating the collaboration culture.- The second was support learning the Design Doing (experimental development) process, integrate it in VET and learn how to use it in companies. Participants have had experience of sharing the skills in action when working with customers and they got competence and courage to do experiments. The main idea is keep the experiments simple with reasonable costs, use suitable tools and save time, money and get results! Guidebook and video with easy examples are launced in Erasmus+ dissemination platform. There are insturction how to use Experimental development -course and if needed, more help is offered by Katja Väyrynen from Riveria.- The third goal was to improve the efficiency of work by LEAN thinking and learning simple methods and principles of it in partner organizations. Then adopt these to daily procedures of teachers/entrepreneurs/workers. During the project we tested the LEAN 5S-principles, Lean A3 and Waste-analyze. These are helping to find out challanges needed to develop and also make fluency in the processes.Main results are: Guidebook of experimental development and instruction video. Language used was English. Original plan was only translate tools in own languages, but when we did a guidebook too, it can be translated easily to different languages, but without intellectual outputs funding, we desided to do only English version..This experimental development study course created is really suitable in all kind of challanges, in all fields of study and industry. Please try and get rapid results!

The PPILOW project aims to co-construct through a multi-actor approach solutions to improve the welfare of poultry and pigs reared in organic and low-input outdoor farming systems. The first originality of PPILOW is the participatory approach, involving all actors of the production chain from farmers to consumers, citizens, scientists and policy makers, for proposing and studying welfare improvement levers. The second originality of the project is to provide a combination of practical solutions for welfare improvement that can be applied on a pan-European basis with specific adjustments depending on citizen’s expectations and the target market (national legislation or consumer preferences). More precisely, PPILOW will co-create with end-users welfare self-assessment tools, innovative breeding and rearing strategies and techniques for improving the welfare of animals by avoiding mutilations (piglet castration or beak trimming in poultry), the elimination of one day-old layer male chicks, favouring positive behaviours, and improving health and robustness in both species. The innovative solutions will be investigated experimentally and the most promising ones will be tested on-farm. Multi-criteria analyses of the most effective breeding and rearing strategies will then be realised to evaluate their economic, social and environmental impacts based on the ‘One Welfare’ concept embracing sustainability goals with specific emphasis on animal and human welfare. Business models will be created for the use of high-quality products issued from the adoption of PPILOW strategies to improve welfare in organic and low-input outdoor farming systems for poultry and pigs. Finally, to ensure the rapid uptake of the project results by end-users, appropriate dissemination activities will be developed (such as training, digital videos from field partners, EIP abstracts…) and the close involvement of national practitioner groups throughout the EU will be managed to facilitate change.