Grazing-based production systems have the proven potential to produce high quality food, to be beneficial to the competitiveness of farmers and animal welfare, as well as for other ecosystem services and are widely apreciated by the society. However, for many reasons grazing is generally declining in Europe, which is a threat for many ecosystem services. In Grazing4AgroEcology (G4AE), grazing farmers are for the first time at the centre of a thematic network, complementing other thematic networks such as Inno4Grass, EuroDairy, SheepNet, BovINE, HNVLink, etc. in providing solutions for sustainable, integrated grazing-based animal production systems. G4AE has 18 partners including farmers organisations, extension services, education, and research in eight countries (France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, & Sweden). The Partner Farm Network of G4AE of 120 Partner farms (15 per country) will enable the capture and implementation of best-practices and innovations to promote grazing for agroecology. Our 3-tier multi-actor approach based on co-creation and knowledge sharing will actively involve all relevant actors of the grazing AKIS including farmers, industry, education, researchers, advisors, society, etc. This will improve the uptake of the innovation capital and significantly contribute to the improvement of the transferability of best practices and innovations and will also enable cross linkage of OGs. G4AE will innovate the grazing sector by strengthening the capacity of farmers to understand more objectively their own agroecological performance through an integrated self-assessment. This will trigger farmers to strive for innovation. G4AE will boost digitalization through webinars, digital interactions, videos and media training. G4AE will provide a rich set of practical hands-on knowledge and training material for a vast community of current and future grazing farmers, available in a Knowledge & Information Management System.

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.

Grasslands are vitally important for European agriculture. The 20 partners of Inno4Grass gather farmers’ organisations, extension services, education and research in eight countries (Germany, Belgium, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland & Sweden) where grasslands contribute a major share of the agricultural area. The overall objective of the project is to bridge the gap between practice and science to ensure the implementation of innovative systems on productive grasslands to achieve profitability while providing environmental services. The associated animal productions are dairy and beef cattle and sheep. Inno4Grass will set up a Facilitator Agents network, capture novelties from innovative farms scrutinized via 85 case studies, discuss and synthesize them in electronic farm networks and through cognitive mapping. It will upgrade this capital via multi-actor approaches and science dialogue, transfer innovation capital and boost collaboration and exchanges beyond the borders of regions and among Member States (MS). Dedicated dissemination approaches and events like national and European Wikimedia, decision support systems and grassland awards are designed and applied to convey innovations to practice with highest acceptance by practitioners and beyond the project term. Inno4Grass will ensure delivery and training of grassland knowledge at operational, tactical and strategic levels for farmers, advisors, and students (specific syllabus, materials for existing MOOCs) and for the value chain mobilizing key actors within the collaborating MS. At least 100 practice abstracts and 104 video clips describing innovative practices will be provided. The project strongly contributes to the implementation of the EIP and many consortium members are involved in their national contact points. This supports the establishment and cross linkage of Operational Groups on grasslands.

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is based on a diversity of pest management measures (prevention, non-chemical control, best practices for optimizing pesticide efficiency, etc.). These are combined at the farm level to enable reduced reliance on pesticides, and therefore a decrease in the exposure of the environment and people to pesticides. Rare pioneer farmers throughout Europe are testing such IPM strategies and are succeeding in achieving good outcomes with low pesticide inputs. However the majority of European farmers still rely heavily on pesticides, with major environmental and societal impacts, because most of them have not adopted a comprehensive, farm-level and holistic IPM strategy so far. The objective of IPMWORKS is to promote the adoption of IPM strategies, based on a EU-wide network of farmers, who will both progress further in the adoption of IPM – through peer-to-peer learning and joint efforts – and demonstrate to other farmers that holistic IPM “works”; i.e. allows a low reliance on pesticides with better pest control, reduced costs and enhanced profitability. IPMWORKS will coordinate existing networks promoting IPM and launch new hubs of farms in regions or sectors where IPM pioneers are not yet engaged in a relevant network. Advisors coordinating hubs will have a major role in facilitating knowledge sharing, coaching farmers to find their own IPM solutions, and organising local demonstration activities. IPMWORKS will stimulate access to the ‘IPM Decisions’ platform and provide information on the IPM methods. It will collect data for comparing IPM strategies, and share results and dissemination material through channels widely used by farmers, broadcasting IPM success stories. It will organise training, and produce training material, targeting both farmers outside the network and advisory services, in order to prepare for the future dissemination of the peer-to-peer learning approach and the general adoption of IPM throughout the EU.

NEFERTITI is a unique project that establishes 10 interactive thematic networks and bring together 45 regional clusters (hubs) of demo-farmers and the involved actors (advisors, NGOs, industry, education, researchers and policy makers) in 17 countries. NEFERTITI focuses on creating added value from the exchange of knowledge, actors, farmers and technical content over the networks in order to boost innovation uptake, to improve peer to peer learning and network connectivity between farms actors across Europe, thus contributing to a more competitive, sustainable and climate-smart agriculture. NEFERTITI address 10 themes that have been chosen based on key concerns of the farming communities of the regional hubs in the project, covering together a balanced range of themes over three main agricultural sectors: animal production, arable farming and horticultural production. The themes have also been chosen regarding their innovation potential, their demonstration potential and the cross-fertilisation potential among the themes, the sectors and the actors. Themes are closely linked to the H2020 Thematic Networks and will connect with other organisational structures at grass root level, like EIP operational groups and study clubs that will confer to the project a key role of accelerator and empowerment of the dissemination and of the uptake of the practical-oriented knowledge delivered by all EIP related projects. A monitoring and learning program supports the systematic extraction of lessons learnt, lessons to be shared with wide audiences including AKIS actors and public authorities. A web based platform unlocks the experience, actors, demo details and the related content for wide spread sharing, enhanced by dedicated production of relevant material (including high-quality professional videos) in each language of the partners. NEFERTITI will engage a policy dialogue with EU Regions to match farmers and policy makers’ interests in view of the networks sustainability.