Smart Crop Farming technologies allow farmers to optimize inputs and tailor cultivation practices to specific crop requirements. Despite the potential of these technologies to enhance agriculture, their adoption remains surprisingly low in Europe. Well-organized, farmer-focused, multi-actor advisory systems and networks can play a crucial role for farmers to understand and implement Smart Crop Farming technologies. These advisory systems involve multiple stakeholders and prioritize farmers' needs, while enabling knowledge exchange among diverse players. Operational Groups (OGs) provide a strong platform for this, but many lack the required capabilities. TechCoach's main objective is to strengthen farmers’ ability to assess, adopt, and integrate Smart Crop Farming technologies at the farm level, by facilitating collaborative innovation and multi-actor advisory in Operational Groups and AKIS. This will be achieved through the mobilization of OG’s and AKIS actors, as well as the utilization of existing and new thematic networks and Multi-Actor Approach projects, to gather and disseminate knowledge and experience for application in local contexts across Europe. TechCoach will serve a dual purpose: (1) strengthening the results of Operational Groups, and (2) accelerating these results through networks at the national and EU level. The approach includes 3 levels of interventions. Firstly, we learn how EIP Operational Groups facilitate their members in the adoption of Smart Farming technologies. Good practices are described, and gaps are identified. At the start of the project, TechCoach will work with 10 OG’s in 5 countries. Secondly, we connect project OGs, other OGs and AKIS actors in national networks to share knowledge and experience on the theme of facilitating Smart Crop Farming adoption and to narrow the identified gaps. And thirdly, we connect OGs and national networks across borders and enhance pan-European learning and collaboration in Smart Crop Farming.

iSAGE will enhance the sustainability, competitiveness and resilience of the European Sheep and Goat sectors through collaboration between industry and research. iSAGE have a powerful consortium with 18 industry representatives from various EU production systems and socio-economic contexts. The sheep and goat sector will be investigated because it is sensitive to general socio-economic, demographic, and ecological and market challenges; nevertheless, the project’s approach and results will be made available and disseminated to other EU livestock industries. Therefore, at the core of iSAGE is a participatory approach centered on a multi-actor internal and external communication (WP) to build the project from the farmer level. This approach will ensure relevant issues are addressed and the project outcomes are applicable in practice and create a farm-level observatory and knowledge exchange network on the sustainability of livestock. This WP will also assist three assessment work packages that will deal with the sustainability assessment of sheep and goat farm systems and related supply chains, with socio-economic demographic and consumer trend analyses, and with the impacts of climate change. Assessment WPs will inform action WPs that will: (1) redesign holistic farming systems to best reconcile the various demands concerning productivity, sustainability and societal values. (2) identify industry solutions that aim to improve sustainability and productivity of sheep and goat systems through breeding, including new phenotypes linked to sustainable animal productivity. iSAGE, together with stakeholders and end-users, will draft a roadmap for further research and policy making. The stakeholder groups will be the key players in disseminating project outputs through case studies and demonstrations to act as a blueprint to other producers across Europe and create networks to assist wider implementation of iSAGE outputs.

Electronic data generation, analytics and communication technologies potentially enable more accurate, faster and better decision-making on farms, with huge potential to improve agricultural sustainability. There is a major focus on digitisation by EU and national/regional policy-makers to ensure that digital innovation in agriculture keeps pace with other sectors and the benefits of digitisation are available to the wider farming community. However, there is a danger that digitisation and future innovations will be hampered unless the rural advisory community is mobilised to take ownership of digital tools and to advocate at the user interface. This CSA will engage, enable and empower the independent farm advisor community, through sharing of tools, expertise and motivations. FAIRshare has two main programmes. Firstly, WPs 1, 2 and 3 will gather an evidence base of the digital tools and services used internationally, leveraging the social networks of partner institutions that span EU and non-EU countries. The inventory of tools will be accessible to end-users on an intuitively navigable online interface that has been co-designed using a multi-actor approach. Accompanying the tools in the online inventory will be information, for instance short ‘good practice’ vignettes, on how the tools may be used/adapted for use. Secondly, WPs 4, 5 and 6 will generate and resource a participatory ‘living laboratory’, empowering advisor peers from across the EU to interact with the online inventory and, in a series of workshops, to exchange, co-adapt, co-design and apply digital tools. The FAIRshare 'living lab’ will enable advisors to address challenges to embedding digital tools in different advisory and farming contexts across the EU. Special focus will be on co-designing powerful communication and engagement approaches for advisors to advocate and inspire their peers and farmer clients, driving a social movement for the wider and better use of digital tools.

Climate Farm Demo is a unique pan-European network of Pilot Demo Farmers (PDFs) covering 28 countries and all pedo-climatic areas. Its overall aim it to accelerate the adoption of Climate Smart Farming (CSF) practices and solutions by farmers and all actors of the Climate Smart Agriculture Knowledge & Innovation Systems with a view of adapting agricultural production systems to climate change and of achieving a carbon neutral agricultural sector by 2050, thereby meeting the targets of the EU Climate strategy. To reach this objective, the project adopts a Multi-Actor approach by connecting 1500 Pilot Demo Farmers and their Climate Farm Advisors (CFAs) at European and national levels to increase knowledge exchange & cross-fertilisation in their respective AKIS. The CFA’s will support the PDF’s in implementing Adaptation and Mitigation Measures suggested by contextualised guidelines and will assess & monitor their environmental performance thanks to harmonized methodologies & tools. Technical and social innovations covering a broad range of thematic areas will be demonstrated to the wider farming community across six annual demo-campaigns (4500 demo-events) supporting interactive and peer to peer learning. New and innovative CSF solutions will be co-created in 10 Living Labs spread across Europe and lessons learned from multi-actor innovation will be shared and scaled. A set of public and private rewarding mechanisms will be identified, proposed and demonstrated to the AKIS actors, thus incentivising the uptake of CSF solutions while ensuring sustainable business models. Strategic and operational cooperation will be organised with projects, flagship initiatives and policy-makers at European and national levels in order to share knowledge, organize coordinated actions, and produce policy briefs. Finally, to accelerate the wide spreading and uptake of results, an ambitious dissemination, exploitation and communication strategy will be deployed at EU and national levels

EcoStack will provide European farmers with the knowledge and tools needed to maximise ecosystem services for the production of crops, while minimising environmental impacts of agriculture and ensuring the profitability of farming. The objectives will be achieved by stacking ecosystem services to enhance synergistically the effective interplay of the service providers. Previous attempts at achieving this have been ineffective due to uncertainty of pollinator and natural enemy exchange between crop types and habitats, as well as the reluctance of growers to establish refugia for natural enemies and pollinators. In EcoStack we will focus on the management of beneficial organisms within the field, rather than trying to manage the external influx. We will make full use of increased knowledge of interactions between trophic levels (microbe-plant-herbivore-natural enemy / pollinator), and will manage and assess functional biodiversity benefits at different levels (within and between species, fields, landscapes), and stack them for maximizing farmer benefits and system resilience. Our research covers: conventional and organic cropping systems; arable, horticultural and permanent crops; pastoral and mixed systems, and all pedoclimatic production zones of Europe. Specific focus is on oilseed rape, wheat, and potato; field tomato; orchards (olive, fruit trees) and vineyards, and grassland/pastures. Advanced molecular and other technical tools are used to determine source populations of beneficial organisms, and to monitor and record movements and interactions. A comprehensive work-package will address relevant socio-economic questions including farmer uptake, and a specific tool will be developed based on precision agriculture data to allow farmers to link inputs (including functional biodiversity) to output (yield maps), based on data from their own fields. We have access to comprehensive farm networks covering all of Europe, for implementing and demonstrating our results.