The economic crisis that EU is facing in the last years had negative effects on the employment rate in the member countries. More specifically the unemployment rate in the euro area passed from 6,4% in 2007 to 11,5% in November 2014, with even worse figures in some countries as Spain that passed from an unemployment rate of 8,3% to the 23,9%. The youth unemployment rate has reached at the end of 2014 the 23,7% in the euro area with countries like Spain almost reaching the 55% (Eurostat, 7 January 2015).In 2010, 97% of all the farms in the EU-27 were family farms (farms held by a single natural person who is also the manager) being only the 16% of total agricultural labour performed by non-family workers. At the same time Agriculture in Europe faces a demographic challenge. In 2007 in EU-27, 55, 5% of farmers were over 55 years old. Only 6, 3% were younger than 35 years old, being the ratio of farmers 55 y.o. of only 0.11. This data didn’t improve a lot in the last years considering that the above-mentioned ratio only improved from 0.11 in 2007 to 0.14 in 2010 (EC, Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural development, 12/2013)The European Commission (EC) and its member states constantly highlight family farming for its contribution to the multifunctional aspects of European agriculture in general. The EC is supporting young farmers under the rural development initiatives of the common agricultural policy’s (CAP) so-called second pillar.Family farms thus represent an important resource that may help:- Reducing the unemployment rate in rural areas;- Tackling the demographic challenge of European farming;- Maintaining and improving the social, economic and cultural sustainability of rural areas.To keep alive the economic and social potential of family farms a key factor is to provide young farmers with the tools and knowledge needed to face the succession process.The project focuses on the presentation of and the exchange about successful experiences of skilled and motivated young farmers in continuing the family business of their parents. This exchange about experiences from entrepreneur to entrepreneur will lead to:• development of further innovative concepts and patterns for succession.• facility in decision making during succession in family run farms in Europe.• improvement in the economic and personal situation in this phase and for the future.• improvement for the demographic situation in agriculture and rural areas.• improve demographic situation in agriculture and rural areas.These objectives will be reached by providing young farmers training materials based on case studies and complementary OER that will make them able to face in a sustainable way the succession process in their family farms. Namely the main contents of the training system are:- A summary report about the state of the art of succession processes in family farms in Europe and in the involved countries;- A set of 30 case studies gathering best practices related to succession processes in family farms in the involved countries;- Training modules providing the knowledge needed to face a succession process in a sustainable way;- A “serious game” simulating a succession process in different family farms context.The training materials (in English, German, Spanish, Italian, Slovenian, Czech and French) are fully available free of charges on the project webpage.The FARM_SUCCESS consortium is made of the following partners:TUM (DE): Technical University of Munich, participating with the Chair Economics of Horticulture and Landscaping.HuL (DE): An independent private consultancy focused on consulting of agricultural and rural family enterprises. OnP (ES): A project managing and project evaluation consulting enterprise.COAG (ES) and APF_CR (CZ): Farmers associations. AèV (IT): An Association of Vocational Training promoted by the Agricultural Italian Confederation (CIA) in order to provide VET to the associated farmers (more than 900.000) throughout Italian rural areas.BTC_Naklo (SI): A public educational institution working in these fields: Agriculture, Rural Development, Horticulture, Floristic, Dairying, Nature Preservation, Organic Farming, Stockbreeding and Renewable Energy. They are an important actor within the Slovenian VET system.CEJA (BE): A European umbrella organisation gathering farmers association and representing around 2 million young farmers in Europe.

On-farm Renewable Energy Systems (RES) can provide agrarian communities with an extra source of stable income, while guaranteeing long term clean energy supply for society. Despite their enormous potential for RES, in practice many farmers are not capable of accessing the financial, technical and administrative resources required for installing RES capacity on their farms. This is caused by RES investments generally being restricted to project finance for large installations while RES types that can be installed on farms require bank loans. This limitation greatly restricts capital supply while raising overall cost. Most farms in the targeted countries have a low credit profile that disqualifies them for loans. To overcome this limitation and fully take advantage of the last few years´ cost reductions and performance advancements in RES, a tailored investment instrument is needed that can attract capital from capital markets and especially from institutional investors to on-farm RES. The recent appearance of innovative investment schemes, addressed to overcome similar challenges in other sectors, demonstrates that, by creating pools of RES, access to capital market resources can be realized. The proposed action is designed to initiate a structured dialogue among farmers, financiers and other relevant experts and stakeholders in order to develop and promote such an investment instrument, tailored for on-farm RES. The consortium that presents this proposal includes, among other key stakeholders, a leading European financial institution, a university as well as the largest farmers´ associations of Spain, Italy and Greece. The quality of the consortium and the relevance of the expected results mean that this proposal is a unique opportunity to increase the financeability of on-farm RES in Europe.

The IMPLEMENT project aims at disseminating good and innovative practices for European farmers on the use of pesticides and other plant protection chemicals, also in comparison with similar standards used in Turkey, with a specific attention to i) safety of operators, ii) environmental protection from diffusion of toxic and polluting products, and iii) food safety. Plant protection is an absolutely necessary measurement for securing the high and stable productivity in the present agriculture. However, because of applying pesticide, it has produced the pollution of environment, which endangers the life of human being, so that it has been paid more attention greatly. Also, plant protection machinery is very different with the other agricultural machinery, its quality and application techniques level affect safety of products. The project is coordinated by the Ondokuz Mayis University and partners are: Agricoltura è Vita Associazione and ENAMA from Italy, ASAJA Granada from Spain and Ankara University and University of Cukurova from Turkey. Other foreseen external collaborations will be: COPA-COGECA, representing the European farmers' associations and cooperatives, ENTAM, representing the EU agricultural machinery certification bodies and CEMA, representing the European Agricultural Machinery Manufacturers. Other European associations and networks will be involved during the ongoing activities (CEJA, OSHA-Europe, CEDEFOP), as well as representatives of European institutions.The main output of the project will be a catalogue for combined training, open on the spot, long distance and online interactive learning, based on a typologic selection, without reference to trade marks, of the sprayer machineries with their positive and negative issues with relation to the triad of personal, environmental and food safety. The machines will be adequately explained, by support of brief descriptions and a wide use of pictures and video-clips, within training modules sequenced according to increasing levels based on the European Qualifications Framework, starting from a basic admission test (Level 1) corresponding to the qualification of farmer and generic agricultural employee and/or first instalment young farmer to grow up step-by-step to the superior levels (Level 2, for the basic use and maintenance of the machine; Level 3 for planning spraying and related preparation, cleaning and maintenance ; Level 4, with a specialistic module for functional controls addressed to expert sprayer users and personnel responsible for this kind of controls; Level 5, with a specialistic module for sprayer machinery manufacturers including advises for improvement of some technical characteristics, fit for increasing safety standards and providing a user friendly manual for use, controls and correct maintenance).The main target users are: a) farmers and sprayers operators; b) agronomists, trainers and persons in charge of the prevention and protection service at work; c) technicians in charge for functional controls of sprayer machineries ; d) manufacturers of sprayer machineries with specific reference to providing user friendly use and maintenance manuals. The project is sheduled to be developed through 8 Work Packages:I) Staff building, task responsibility sharing and coordination (OMU);II) Training needs analysis and comparison between the participating countries, with specific reference to European rules and standards and to Turkey as a case study (AèV);III) Adaptation of existing training materials with innovative methodology based on slides and animations with brief description and commented movies (ENAMA);IV) Evaluation of the teaching materials, risk analysis and internal assessment (Ankara University);V) Transfer of the teaching materials in an interactive e-learning training platform (OMU) and translation of the teaching materials from English into the national languages (all partners); VI) Test of prototype training materials with target groups (ASAJA Granada);VII) Presentation of the training materials and piloting tests with farmers and manufacturers representatives (with involvement of CEMA, ENTAM and COPA-COGECA in Brussels), and participation of the involved European institutions (European Commission DG AGRI, Employment, Health and Safety; members of the European Parliament and of other institutions, such as Economic Social Committee and Committee of Regions), press and other media journalists specialized for agricultural and work safety. VIII) International Final Conference with presentation of the final results and products and availability online of the training materials (OMU in collaboration with Cukurova and Ankara Universities).

In recent years, climate change has caused a remarkable instability which is affecting the availability and quality of water in many European regions. The lack and difficulty of managing this matter, not only within farming sector is generating tensions between regions and enterprises due to the availability, quality and distribution of water. Considering also the fact that certain products are of notably high water demand and that on certain countries the hydraulic network for agricultural activities is old with many leakages, the gravity of the presented issue is imperative.These evidences and missing short-term and long-term solutions/ perspectives for sustainable solutions build the basis for this project aiming at:raising awareness about the danger of water shortage and the risks of pollutiontraining allowing to optimize the use and quality of water resourcesExchange of examples related more efficient and less polluting farming techniquesWater is a primary resource for agricultural production as well as it is important factor for other sectors and at the same time a public good with public interest behind.Agriculture as the main user of water resources has a significant responsibility in managing of natural resources. And to widen further the topic: agriculture as a sector has influence on water usage; as well on climate change – at least the part of the change which is caused by humans.The project wants to follow a bottom up approach which means learning from practitioners and making their knowledge, patterns and methods in the field of sustainable water management on farming, based on 3 elements:Summary GuideCase studiesTraining modulesThe project’s training methodology is based on the Open Educational Resources (OER) approach, thus developing digital training materials that will be available under a creative commons license allowing their use and distribution free of charges.