BEATLES aspires to change the way agri-food systems currently operate and accelerate the systemic and systematic behavioural shift to climate-smart agriculture and smart farming technologies fully aligned with the ambitions of the Farm to Fork and Biodiversity Strategies, and the new CAP at regional and EU levels. By adopting a food systems approach, the agri-food value chain is viewed as a system of interlinked components where interactions lead to systemic innovations. Through targeted selection of agri-food value chains across the EU and by engaging multiple stakeholders in the co-creation of systemic innovations, in the context of appropriate behavioural and experimental settings, the project will provide an integrative inventory of behavioural insights about the full range of “lock-ins” and levers that hinder or motivate behavioural change, including individual, systemic and policy factors. Five different food systems representing the major crop and livestock farming systems in Europe (cereals, dairy, stone fruits, livestock, vegetables) in various EU regions (Western, Eastern, Southern and Northern Europe), will be studied to account for the diversity in agri-food systems and conditions in the EU. The behavioural insights are used to develop transformative pathways, via business strategies and policy recommendations, to encourage transition to fair, healthy and environmentally-friendly food systems. BEATLES will provide a set of business strategies establishing roadmaps for a fair shift towards climate-smart agriculture, based on environmental, social and economic sustainability assessments. Moreover, a series of policy recommendations and tools will be developed to foster behaviourally informed policy design and implementation. The active participation of multiple value chain actors, at various levels of society (public, political, professional), in the co-creation activities all along the project’s lifespan will establish a mutual understanding of the value

FUTURAL aims to deliver a set of digital Smart Solutions (SS) under 5 Smart Solution domains to address pressing social and environmental challenges. An integrated metasearch platform providing a one-stop shop for SS will be the gateway to FUTURAL's solutions, enabling search and access to SS developed by similar initiatives. FUTURAL will prototype, test, pilot and demonstrate community-led social, technological and business innovations based on the proposed SS in six rural pilot areas in the EU, representing different geographical and socio-cultural contexts. An interdisciplinary consortium of partners and a multi-actor approach will pave a coherent path towards the FUTURAL innovations through joint actions and governance systems. FUTURAL will engage rural communities and pursue public-private interactions to develop new social practices that enable market adoption and widespread social change. A clearly outlined networking, EU-wide Rural Innovation Forum (EU-RIF), building on links with key organisations, networks, projects and initiatives within the European rural development ecosystem will also be developed. The project's Open Call will fund projects that will develop their own SS, based on the five FUTURAL SS domains, to be applied in other rural areas and be available on the project's metasearch platform. A vibrant and sustainable ecosystem will be created around FUTURAL to maximise the impact of the project. The broad application of the project innovations will be enabled through the creation of business models tailored to the needs of different rural contexts and social groups. Policy recommendations and governance frameworks will be co-created in multi-actor workshops in the project's EU-RIF to support, among others, the European Green Deal, the European Digital Strategy, the European Pillar of Social Rights and the EU's long-term vision for rural areas.

REHUBS addresses the issues of climate vulnerability in rural areas and small to medium-sized communities, which are particularly susceptible to climate risks such as droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, floods, and biodiversity loss. REHUBS’ goal is to enhance climate resiliency of these areas by developing an integrated framework of adaptation solutions, advanced digital tools, and participatory approaches, tailored to the specific needs of the rural communities. The project will design, implement and validate a Climate Risk Assessment model, an Advanced Early Warning System, Flood and Drought Modelling tools, Smart Irrigation Systems, a Circular Water Recovery Treatment, a Rapid Wildfire Detection System, as well as a Risk Assessment and Adaptation Platform that will recommend a list of cost-effective nature based solutions (NBS). REHUBS will promote knowledge transfer, enhance the adaptation capacity of local authorities, and upskill local actors through an online academy, an AI support chatbot and through fostering stakeholder collaboration through the project’s established Rural Micro Hubs (RMHs). The solutions developed in REHUBS will be implemented and validated across four Demonstration Cases, with replication in three additional Replication Cases, ensuring that they, not only address immediate climate risks, but also build long-term resilience by integrating climate adaptation strategies into local governance frameworks. Additionally, the project will introduce innovative financial instruments to support the sustainable implementation of these solutions, ensuring both their cost-effectiveness and replicability across different European regions. The project's outcomes will contribute significantly to enhancing the adaptive capacity of rural communities, supporting EU climate goals, and ensuring socio-economic and environmental sustainability in regions facing critical climate challenges.

Agricultural robotics solutions can integrate a variety of robots for a variety of monitoring and targeted intervention tasks, to increase farm productivity, efficiency and sustainability through support of automated precision farming operations. Despite the rising farmer investment in farm/agricultural robots, most deployable robotic systems are meant to automate only specific tasks. The wide variety of tasks that need to be fulfilled in a single precision agriculture operation or mission makes it extremely unprofitable to address its automation with task-specific robots. These challenges result in a lack of flexibility of current heterogeneous multi-robot systems that poses low returns on investment and high risks for farmers. In order to become cost-effective, heterogeneous multi-robot systems needs to become more flexible by employing more versatile (e.g. multi-task) robots which collaborate to accomplish complex missions; ensuring scalable human oversight and intervention through adaptive mission control mechanisms (e.g. without information overload /overwhelming effort from the farmer); allowing the farmer to profit from robotics operational data. FlexiGroBots proposes a Platform for developing heterogeneous multi-robot systems and applications which allows for i) more versatility by using the same robots for different observation and intervention tasks, in different missions, throughout the crop life cycle, ii) more cooperation between heterogeneous (ground and aerial) robots to accomplish more complex missions; iii) more valuable data to generate accurate insights into the fields, crops and robotics operations by combining data from IoT sensors, satellites and data collected by the robots; iv) more autonomy for real-time adaptation of mission plans as well as robot behaviour at the crop level, given operational conditions and real-time insights; v) more precision to carry out specific tasks in a very localized way, gaining accuracy and lowering costs.

ICAERUS proposes an “application-oriented” approach, through the selection of five (5) specific drone applications, to explore the multi-purpose application potential of drones in agricultural production, forestry and rural communities. The selected drone applications represent the most important sectoral and societal drone usage purposes in Europe and cover multiple applications that are interconnected within the complex rural European landscape. The ICAERUS vision is to explore opportunities and provide a more complete and interconnected account of the potential and impact of drones as multi-purpose vehicles in EU agriculture, forestry and rural areas. The aim is to showcase and support, through application, the effective, efficient and safe deployment of drones as well as, identify the risks and added values associated with their use. “Taking off” from the current state-of-the-art in the drone ecosystem, ICAERUS will “rise up” by advancing existing software technology, platform components and knowledge in regard to drones, to exploit the potential of drones and strengthen capacities to reduce their risks, achieve better informed decision-making, enhance sustainability performance and competitiveness in agriculture, forestry and rural areas. This will be showcased in two directions: fundamental applications representing an “eye-in-the-sky”, using the drone as a positioning system for optical observation and recording, and a “hand-in-the-sky” applications, for spraying and goods delivery. ICAERUS plans to scale-up through research, technology optimisation, demonstration and education about drones to create an efficient, trusted and safe enabling environment for the EU drone services market to achieve the EU’s decarbonisation, digitalisation and resilience ambitions. ICAERUS consists of a balanced, multi-actor, cross sectoral and well-experienced consortium, including research organisations, SME technology providers, associations and non-profit organisations.