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.

WelFarmers will set up eight national innovation networks and four Europe-wide networks of pig farmers, advisors, veterinarians and researchers to address the challenges of the upcoming change in the European pig welfare legislation. WelFarmers will address four main topics: cage ban; keeping pigs with uncovered tails; avoiding pain during castration and space and flooring. The most urgent innovation needs and challenges will be identified in a bottom up way and the network will collect and evaluate good practices that meet these needs. WelFarmers will also strive to collaborate with existing and new EIP-AGRI operational groups (OGs) and EU research projects focused on pig welfare and to enhance their impact. The selected best practices will be disseminated through a series of communication and dissemination activities to reach most pig farmers in the eight participating countries and in Europe. EIP abstracts, thematic reports videos, brochures, e-news, national workshops, transnational cross-fertilisation events and a multilingual website are some of the dissemination methods planned to communicate and disseminate the best practices.

Climate Smart Research (CSR) is a research & innovation project involving 29 Experimental Research Stations (ERS) across Europe. It will accelerate the transition to climate neutral agriculture. CSR contributes to EU climate goals by developing new Climate Smart Farming (CSF) knowledge and innovations and boost the potential of ERS in realising these goals. More specific CSR will: 1) Co-develop a conceptual foundation for Climate Smart research on agricultural ERS and uncovering implications on system level to assess effectivity, synergies and trade-offs of CSF; 2) Develop cutting edge CSF approaches on selected ERS across 4 pedo-climatic zones with significant mitigation of GHG emissions (-55% to climate neutral) and adaptation to climate change; 3) Collect and compare climate tool-kits, services and decision support systems also for possible use on average farms across the EU and scientifically validate emerging solutions coming from practice; 4) Foster the capacity of research station actors through various knowledge exchange and networking activities amongst ERS and identify pathways for effective climate research and climate research design processes. This supports the development of practice-oriented climate smart knowledge, skills and innovations; 5) Maximise the impact of CSR by ensuring that project results are effectively embedded within EIP-AGRI and national/regional AKIS networks by developing and implementing a strategy for effective Dissemination, Exploitation and Communication. The networks of pilot demonstration farmers and climate smart advisors established in sister projects CFD and CSA will be leveraged to ensure that CSR practice-oriented solutions are widely accessible to farmers across Europe.