Peatlands are crucial in climate change resilience as critical habitats for biodiversity, ecosystem services, and Carbon storage. Today, 50% of the EU peatland area is degraded due to peat extraction, with a high environmental impact associated and poses a high risk for the Green Transition goals. The horticultural industry depends entirely on peat for growing media, as current alternatives face technical, socio-cultural, and economic barriers. PEATLESS aims to contribute to overcoming these barriers to promote the uptake of sustainable and locally available substrates blends with reduced peat content in selected horticultural systems: mushrooms, seedlings and ornamental. These blends will be designed through co-creation and will be tailored to sectorial needs. The performance of these alternative media will be demonstrated and showed to growers at commercial facilities across 4 key regions for horticulture. To demonstrate performance and support decision-making, a digital sensoring system for results monitoring will be developed. To overcome socio-cultural barriers, social innovation, educational and innovative dissemination activities will boost knowledge exchange to raise growers’ confidence in alternatives to peat. To overcome economic barriers, an integral feasibility assessment will be developed (e.g., LCSA) followed by new business and organisational models’ creation. Furthermore, an upscaling plan to replicate the PEATLESS approach at national and European levels will ensure project continuation. This 3-year project involves 12 partners from 4 countries, including RTOs, universities, industry, end-users’ representatives and decision-makers, following a multi-actor approach. By 2050, significant long-term impact is expected, predominantly: 1) Environmental: 2.5m m3 of peat saved with a reduction of 900k t CO2eq); 2) Socio-economic: 5,000 horticultural business with PEATLESS substrates across 40 regions; 3) Policy: +30 recommendations.

Agroforestry (AF) is the practice of deliberately integrating woody vegetation (trees or shrubs) with crop and/or animal systems to benefit from the resulting ecological and economic interactions. Research activities developed by AFINET partners indicates that appropriate application of AF principles and practices is a key avenue to help the European Union to achieve more sustainable methods of food and fibre production, producing both profits for farmers and environmental benefits. However up to now exists a lack of AF knowledge among end-users that prevent the correct implementation of these practices. In this sense AFINET will act at EU level in order to take up research results into agricultural practice, improving knowledge exchange between scientists and practitioners on AF activities, with a special focus on silvoarable and silvopastoral systems design, management, and production and profitability. To achieve this objective AFINET consortium proposes an innovative methodology based on: (i) The creation of a EU reservoir of scientific and practical knowledge of AF with an end-user-friendly access (the “Knowledge Cloud”). (ii) The creation of a European Interregional network (composed of “Regional Agroforestry Innovation Networks” - RAINs) considering a multi-actor approach (including farmers, policy makers, advisory services, extension services, etc.), and articulated through the figure of the “Innovation Broker”. These RAINs groups will be interconnected in nine strategic regions of Europe from Spain, UK, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, Hungary, Poland, France and Finland, representing different climatic, geographical, social, and cultural conditions at European level. In addition, to create a greater user acceptance of the collected solutions and an intensive dissemination to end-users, AFINET will be linked to other networks, initiatives and policy instruments at regional, national and European level with a specific focus on the EIP-AGRI implementation.

In order to defossilise the agricultural sector in line with the EU Green Deal, the local incorporation of renewable energy technologies matching local farmers’ needs in terms of electricity, heat, mobility, waste and land management is key. In this context, the VALUE4FARM project will gather 14 partners (including 7 research-oriented partners, 3 SMEs and 3 associations) in a 42-month project to demonstrate at TRL6-7 the effectiveness, sustainability and replicability of three renewable-based local value chains based on biogas, and coupling sustainable food and renewable-energy production. In Denmark, add-ons to the traditional biomethane pathway will be brought for answering the local specificities of large-scale farms. In Belgium, a pathway towards better use of already-existing residual streams will be demonstrated for efficient production of electricity/heat and fuel, thus answering mobility needs for small-scale farms. In Italy, hybridisation compatibilities will be investigated towards the creation of an efficient off-grid biomethane plant. Sustainable agricultural crop protocols will be developed, based on at least 200 farmers’ specifications, meeting the challenges of the agricultural sector, while matching renewable energy production. All value chains will promote circularity through nutrient recovery. The uptake of the demonstrated value chains will be facilitated by a strong involvement of farmers from the very beginning of the project. Three replication sites in Iceland, Italy and Poland have already been selected in the project. The assessment of the economic, environmental and social benefits of the VALUE4FARM value chains will be widely shared and disseminated to relevant stakeholders. In particular, to encourage the wider farming community across Europe to benefit from producing both food and energy from their land and showcasing the lessons learnt in the demonstration sites, an online decision support tool will be made available in open-access.

The primary mission of the project is to foster innovation, knowledge exchange and provide novel solutions to empower farmers in Europe and associated countries to deliver to multiple objectives: food production, carbon capture, and biodiversity. Agroforestry is an auspicious land use type, allowing farmers to continue producing food while significantly improving the environmental sustainability of their operations. Integration of trees into agricultural business contributes to a host of ecosystem services, lowering the environmental and social impact of food production. Past research has attempted to foster the renaissance of agroforestry in Europe, resulting in a sizeable knowledge base and modelling capability. The most critical barriers to agroforestry adoption in Europe relate to lack of knowledge, impact of tree planting on farm business, and unclear policy support positioned between agriculture and forestry. We will employ a co-creation and multi-actor approach as our fundamental research method to place agroforestry systems in the right balance of farm productivity, socio-economic viability and sustainability. We will maximise the use of existing knowledge and data, utilise agroforestry living labs built upon foundations laid by previous projects, and establish a stakeholder and actor engagement platform to enable knowledge transfer, training and innovation. This project will prioritise enhancing knowledge exchange and transfer, enabling the integration of carbon and biodiversity finance in farm business models, and by proposing targeted policy interventions as solutions to overcoming barriers to agroforestry expansion.

European Union (EU) water resources are increasingly coming under pressure from climate change and inefficient management, with the agri-food sector exerting a 40-60% of water use. Despite recognising the need for resource optimisation, integrating sustainable innovative solutions into farming practices remain vague. AQUAGRI-KNOW, led by a multi-actor consortium of 12 partners from 5 EU countries, aims to tackle efficient water management on-farm by broadening EIP-AGRI OGs outcomes. AQUAGRI-KNOW’s endeavour has been thoughtfully chosen to address water scarcity and water quality concerns focusing on four strategies ensuring a circular water value chain (S1. Water Use, S2. Water Smart Crops, S3. Water-Soil Interface, and S4. Water Reuse). AQUAGRI-KNOW systematically adapts, enhances and builds-up practical knowledge through a five-step methodology: (1) Knowledge collection & homogenisation to gather EIP-AGRI OGs outcomes and beyond; (2) Contextualisation & alignment to integrate the needs, barriers, challenges, and opportunities of end-users; (3) Translation & adaptation to create a clearinghouse of tailored knowledge for farmers and practitioners; (4) Sharing & exchange to facilitate knowledge flow; and (5) Interconnection & widening to boost impact across borders and increase the lifespan of generated knowledge. AQUAGRI-KNOW impact is transformative, by modernising the agri-food sectorthrough the improvement of practitioners' access to easy-to-understand and practice-oriented knowledge. AQUAGRI-KNOW empowers farmers to make informed decisions, foster cross-border collaboration, and develop a comprehensive and scalable framework applicable to similarly impacted regions globally. Furthermore, an Ambassador Program will be placed, transferring knowledge to enable the adoption of innovative solutions in new sites, expanding AQUAGRI-KNOW’s impact. Through these efforts, AQUAGRI-KNOW envisions a collaborative, informed, sustainable future for EU agriculture.