The Societal Challenges addressed by European Union (EU) strategies such as the Green Deal and Farm-to-Form require innovative solutions in agriculture, forestry and rural areas. The Multi-Actor-Approach (MAA) is a promising instrument to speed up innovation. However, the H2020 RIA LIAISON (2018-2022) has identified some deficits and inconsistencies in the interpretation of the MAA by both current and potential MA consortia and Member States’ (MS) authorities. PREMIERE will therefore foster the development of sound, coherent and well-prepared MA projects in two ways. Firstly, it will contribute to the building of project consortia that make best use of the complementary knowledge of their members during proposal writing, project activities and beyond, in particular by improving the connection between Horizon Europe (HE) MA projects and Operational Groups (OG). Secondly, through insights and tools, it will support the implementation of innovative governance and sound decision making in policy and administration for the green transition. By using the results from LIAISON and capturing ‘grass roots’ ideas from project participants, policy makers and executive agencies through stakeholder dialogue across all 27 EU MS (including with the SCAR AKIS SWG, National Contact Points and other relevant HE projects), PREMIERE will develop tools as well as training and networking events for capacity development. These will include a Serious Game, an Online Academy and a MOOC. The project will test out the effect of providing seed funding to at least eight MA organisations (mainly OGs) and prepare a handbook of good practices. This user-focused workplan, with its open science outputs, will lead to more effective EU and national AKIS. It will be implemented by a very experienced, competent and genuinely MA consortium of policy makers, executive agencies, advisors for co-innovation partnerships, AKIS actors and/or and current and potential MA project partners.

EURAKNOS will boost compiling of knowledge ready for practice by intensifying interaction between various agri-food or forestry networks thereby maximising outputs for practitioners. The focus of this proposal is on widening existing thematic network outputs in an interactive way, both content-wise and in terms of geographical coverage. Avoiding duplication with the existing networks, cross-fertilisation will be organised between them and among countries, regions and production systems. EURAKNOS will tackle the data management with a view to ensure sustainability of these knowledge networks and maximise their outputs for end-users. To this end, EURAKNOS will stimulate the exchange of existing approaches, methodologies and tools between the different thematic networks (and linked EIP operational groups and H2020 multi-actor projects where relevant) and search for a harmonised approach for setting up future thematic networks in order to maximise the impact on the practitioner, farmer and forester. This project will also explore the end users’ needs and possibilities of setting-up a European agricultural knowledge and innovation open source system that may connect all TNs.

EUREKA has brought together 21 multi-actors (MA) from 16 member states and 48 supporting organizations, to co-create a stronger and reinforced EU wide agricultural knowledge base by developing an open source e-platform, called the FarmBook. This two-sided market platform, like Facebook, will address the needs and improve the connections between two distinct user groups: MA project partners and MA end users (farmers, foresters, advisors, scientists, policy makers,…). To realize this, EUREKA will first analyze the MA project knowledge supply (outputs, activities, dissemination,…) to get a comprehensive data overview and distinguish do’s and don’ts on how to co-create and transfer knowledge in these projects. From this analysis best practices and recommendations will be formulated into a MA bible for the current MA community and for EIP-AGRI (+ SWG SCAR AKIS) to improve the design of future MA projects. Participatory activities with many MA projects during EUREKA will lay the foundation to build a more engaged MA project community. All available resources that can be used to share amongst the community and to shape and promote the EUREKA outputs will also be mapped. Second, EUREKA will analyze the knowledge demand from potential end users by profiling them and determining their needs, barriers and preferences across four macro-regions in Europe and across the different agricultural sectors. Third, EUREKA will integrate the results of the analysis on the knowledge supply & demand by consulting various expert working groups to co-create a ranking of MA projects and to select the most relevant and high impact agricultural MA project knowledge for the rural and scientific community. Fourth, the FarmBook will be built to present this knowledge in an accessible, standards-based, easily searchable and open source way. Fifth, the FarmBook will be optimized in several iterations with end-user feedback and will be promoted to end users and the MA project community across Europe.

The main objective of EJP SOIL is to create an enabling environment to enhance the contribution of agricultural soils to key societal challenges such as climate change adaptation and mitigation, sustainable agricultural production, ecosystem services provision and prevention and restoration of land and soil degradation. The EJP SOIL will build a sustainable European integrated research community on agricultural soils and will develop and deploy a roadmap on climate-smart sustainable agricultural soil management. The EJP SOIL roadmap is based on a knowledge framework with 4 interacting components. Knowledge development is set out in project calls with internal and external partners. Knowledge sharing & transfer is framed in capacity building for young scientists, enhancing general public awareness and fostering societal understanding and appreciation of agricultural soil management and its contribution to society. Knowledge harmonization, storage & organization supports harmonised soil information and reporting practices. Knowledge application deals with ways to overcome barriers for adoption of novel practices in a European context, co-developing adequate tools and providing evidence-based recommendations for EU policies. EJP SOIL activities in interaction with stakeholders, MSs and DG AGRI will pursue the long-term goal of promoting farmers as stewards of land and soil resources and support policy development and deployment, in particular the CAP and Climate policies. The EJP SOIL addresses 6 expected impacts with targeted activities in response to societal, scientific, policy and operational challenges. A first annual workplan based on the roadmap is provided as part of the proposal. The EJP Soil consortium unites a unique group of 26 leading European research institutes and universities in 24 countries. The consortium has developed this proposal in close collaboration with its programme owners and has secured over 40M€ in co-funding and 10M€ for external calls over 5 years.

The current state of the art is that the project EURAKNOS has analyzed the knowledge of 28 Horizon funded Thematic Networks (TNs) and linked operational groups (OGs) and developed a vision and guidelines for a digital knowledge reservoir for an EU-wide agriculture and forestry practice. EUREKA has continued this effort by examining 120 Horizon funded MA projects within the EIP-AGRI and developing a ‘proof of concept’ of such a knowledge reservoir building on the results of the EURAKNOS project. EU-FarmBook will capitalize on the results of EURAKNOS and EUREKA, making the data taken up in the platform more FAIR and adding necessary functionalities to the platform based on the users’ needs such as interactive peer to peer interaction and user content evaluation tools. Moreover EU-FarmBook will assure the linkage to traditional dissemination channels, such as agricultural journals, on farm demo activities, and training and education initiatives. The EU-FarmBook will therefore work closely with associations of journalists (ENAJ), educational and training institutions and strengthen the ties with EIP-AGRI Service Point. The effort will also be expanded by looking beyond H2020 and Horizon Europe funded projects, and OGs, through linkage and interoperability with national and regional initiatives. During the whole project an intensive dialogue will be maintained with AKIS coordination offices and CAP networks in all MS. The aim is that during the first stage of the project the concept of the platform will evolve to an exploitable product that will stimulate the exchange and collaboration between the AKIS actors at an EU wide scale. Targeted and efficient management of data and information to support agriculture and forestry practice from different sources will not only support the CAP but also the Green Deal and Farm to Fork objectives and targets, ultimately resulting in innovation for an environmentally, socially and economically sustainable agriculture and forestry