European Union (EU) water resources are increasingly coming under pressure from climate change and inefficient management, with the agri-food sector exerting a 40-60% of water use. Despite recognising the need for resource optimisation, integrating sustainable innovative solutions into farming practices remain vague. AQUAGRI-KNOW, led by a multi-actor consortium of 12 partners from 5 EU countries, aims to tackle efficient water management on-farm by broadening EIP-AGRI OGs outcomes. AQUAGRI-KNOW’s endeavour has been thoughtfully chosen to address water scarcity and water quality concerns focusing on four strategies ensuring a circular water value chain (S1. Water Use, S2. Water Smart Crops, S3. Water-Soil Interface, and S4. Water Reuse). AQUAGRI-KNOW systematically adapts, enhances and builds-up practical knowledge through a five-step methodology: (1) Knowledge collection & homogenisation to gather EIP-AGRI OGs outcomes and beyond; (2) Contextualisation & alignment to integrate the needs, barriers, challenges, and opportunities of end-users; (3) Translation & adaptation to create a clearinghouse of tailored knowledge for farmers and practitioners; (4) Sharing & exchange to facilitate knowledge flow; and (5) Interconnection & widening to boost impact across borders and increase the lifespan of generated knowledge. AQUAGRI-KNOW impact is transformative, by modernising the agri-food sectorthrough the improvement of practitioners' access to easy-to-understand and practice-oriented knowledge. AQUAGRI-KNOW empowers farmers to make informed decisions, foster cross-border collaboration, and develop a comprehensive and scalable framework applicable to similarly impacted regions globally. Furthermore, an Ambassador Program will be placed, transferring knowledge to enable the adoption of innovative solutions in new sites, expanding AQUAGRI-KNOW’s impact. Through these efforts, AQUAGRI-KNOW envisions a collaborative, informed, sustainable future for EU agriculture.

COCOREADO is a project designed to rebalance the position of the farmer as an individual actor, as a key player in innovative food supply chains and as a supplier for public procurement. Based on the multi-actor approach and a deep understanding of agricultural knowledge and innovation systems (AKIS), the project applies a three-fold approach to maximize impact, relying on ambassadorship, good practices, and a focus on youth. COCOREADO will foster opportunities for young people in rural areas to co-create innovative solutions that overcome current hurdles for farmers and respond to consumer needs, while simultaneously improving the conditions for sustainable public procurement of local and seasonal food. The consortium connects key youth actors including young farmers, college youth, youth movements in an environment that offers support and encouragement to undertake action. A key tool for creating such environment is the COCOREADO Ambassador Training Program. Furthermore, the project involves both academic and close-to-farmers partners across Europe, recognising regional differences and barriers in terms of replicability of good practices and regional opportunities in terms of solutions. Active youth engagement in co-creating solutions remains at the core of the well balanced consortium including three EU-level youth organisations, and is embedded within COCOREADO’s methodologies, thus ensuring that innovative supply chains remain future-proof. COCOREADO starts with the collection of innovative initiatives that enhance the position of the farmers and improve their connection with consumers. Good practices will be assessed for their replicability and translated into educational materials. Furthermore, user-friendly decision support tools with high potential will be made accessible. Communication and dissemination of good practices and tools will focus on farmers, rural communities, policy makers, actors in the food chain such as chefs and local food processors.

SafeHabitus will make farming a safer occupation. Farming is amongst the most dangerous jobs in Europe. European statistics show that the fatality rate in farming is 233% higher than other industries and the accident rate is 18% higher. These figures underestimate the scale of the problem as a significant proportion of farm workplace fatalities, injuries and ill health go unreported, un-investigated, and prevention approaches are not learned. Improving farmers’ and farm workers’ health and safety requires action by a range of stakeholders to empower and support them to change unsafe practices and adopt new, safer and healthier ways of working. SafeHabitus is a multi-actor project that has come together to strengthen Farm Health and Safety Knowledge Innovation Systems (FHS KIS) and support the EU transition to social sustainability in farming. Our premise is that driving health and safety on farms is not about dissemination but changing habitual practices. To achieve this, SafeHabitus applies a range of novel methods; digital story telling methods with people who experienced accidents; application of the multi-actor approach to co-design farm work risk management tools; foresight analysis; analyses of consumer willingness to pay for food production that protects health and safety; bench-marking policies and elite interviews with policy makers. Our consortia include end-users, stakeholders and researchers in case study Member States. These work together in ten national COPs covering a representative variety of countries and sectors. SafeHabitus also engages with European bodies and stakeholders who provide critical bridges between EU and national / regional actors and who can influence EU policy such as the Geopa (Copa-Cogeca), CEJA, EFFAT, Oxfam, SVLFG, and AEIDL. This multi-level and transnational approach will allow SafeHabitus advance safer practices on farms across the EU.

"Agricultural markets and farming business changed considerably over recent decades. EU Farmers are facing a need to improve their economic and socio-economic situation. From entrepreneurial view financing is an important task for the farmer besides production and marketing. Decisions in financing - may it be ""traditional"" or innovative - have long term influence on the farm, its liquidity and its income.Especially for young farmers taking over the business of their parents or simply aiming at business development it is very important to have a solid financial basis for their agricultural businesses.Financing affects the sustainability of the single farm (together with effects on and importance for income security) as well as it addresses sustainable development of rural areas as a whole.Innovative financing exists on niche level, but a lot of possibilities are not widely known. To make good decisions in the field of innovative financing farmers need to be equipped with more skills, knowledge and competence, and with experience from successful practice. It is a huge challenge for the farmers to:(1) Keep the business running in a profitable & sustainable way.(2) Respect societal demands towards agricultural production which are increasing constantly.(3) Get financed in adequate and sufficient dimension.There are possibilities to fulfill all 3 aspects at the same time.With FARMINFIN project, we aim at developing a training programme that is going to equip farmers with the needed competences for the implementation of innovative financing means tailored adequately for his own farm, entrepreneurial approach and personal circumstances.In addition to this, we also aim at reaching the following objectives:- Foster professional handling of innovative financing means by farmers.- Strengthen economic and socio-economic viability of family farms.- Deliver added value to rural development.These objectives will be achieved by providing to young farmers a training programme based on the OER approach and on case studies about sustainable and innovative financing ways for farming sector enterprises.The training system will be made of:- A guide about alternative ways of financing in the farming sector.- A set of 12 case studies gathering best practices related to alternative ways of financing in the farming sector in the involved countries;- Training curriculum and training modules providing the knowledge needed to successfully implement a sustainable business initiative in the farming sector.The training materials (in English, Swedish, Czech, German, Spanish, Italian and French) will be fully available free of charges on the project training platform and will be also uploaded on OER repositories (such as www.oercommons.org) making them available to an even wider audience.The FARMINFIN consortium is made of the following partners:CEJA (BE): CEJA is the voice of Europe's next generation of farmers, representing some 2 million young people through a membership comprised of 32 recognized national member organizations in 23 EU member states and an associate member organisation from Serbia.HuL (DE): HuL is an independent private body focused on agricultural family enterprises. HuL is consulting in Germany in all types of agricultural business: crop cultivation as well as animal husbandry, production and processing of biomass for food and feed as well as for energetic or industrial purposes. OnP (ES): OnP is a consulting enterprise specialized in project managing, monitoring and evaluation. Its staff has a wide experience in ERASMUS+ projects and in the development of VET materials in the farming and rural development sector.FU (SE): FU is an adult educational association that offers a wide range of adult education all over Sweden. FU has a broad open educational program in a variety of subjects; it also runs schools in higher vocational education, labour market education and further education and training for working life. AèV (IT): AèV is a Vocational Training Centre. Its main objectives are: to promote and stimulate the social-cultural and civic development and training, at any level, of all the citizens, and more specifically farmers, in many economic and social sectors (agriculture, food industry, administrative and advanced services).APF_CR (CZ): APF_CR is a voluntary professional organization of private farmers in the Czech Republic. Defending the economic, social and professional intents of the Czech private farmers in the Czech Republic and abroad is the fundamental activity of APF_CR.COAG (ES): COAG is a professional farming organisation which operates in the Jaén province, in Andalusia. It provides a wide range of services from the defense of farmers interests to training, information and technical advising, R+D, dissemination of technical improvements, rural development, etc."

Short food supply chains are defined as having as ‘few links as possible between the food producer and the citizen who eats the food’. They typically involve local producers promoting local food produce and have continuously been highlighted as an area for potential market growth in Europe. The standard education for food producers has traditionally been based around production with no focus on sales and marketing, processing or other entrepreneurial-like skills that will empower producers to gain value for their products. Though identified as an important and growing industry, at the time of the project proposal there were no defined European strategies to develop the short food supply chain, though this is now becoming an area of increased research and priority across a variety of European initiatives.The overarching aim of the project was to enhance entrepreneurial training in VET, encompassing work-based learning, aimed at those in the short food supply chain.The specific objectives of the project were to boost innovation and entrepreneurship in Europe by:•Developing a curriculum specific for the short food supply chain incorporating work-based learning to stimulate entrepreneurship•Empowering food producers to gain control of their business models and move up the value chain through engaging in training and networking•Providing a web platform for knowledge exchange between education and enterprisesThe consortium comprised of four partners; Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT, Ireland), The University of Bedfordshire (UoB, UK), The Polish Beef Association (PBA, Poland) and the European Council of Young Farmers (CEJA, Brussels). The partners were chosen for this project as they were all able to bring a wealth of expertise in the delivery of vocational work-based training programmes, the development of web based learning resources and access to the target group (those in the short food supply chain) for dissemination of information and project outcomes. All partners had previously been involved in transnational, EU funded programmes and therefore were highly familiar with the requirements of working in a consortium of this nature. The success of the partnership was such that the majority of partners are still working together across a number of different projects and project proposals. Prior to commencement of the project a needs analysis of the target group was undertaken which was updated during the project. The consortium developed a communication plan and a dissemination plan as well as a timeline of activities to ensure that the project stayed on track. Five transnational meetings took place in Ireland (3), Poland (1) and the UK (1). Three multiplier events were organised by the consortium in the UK (1), Poland (1) and the final conference in Ireland to distribute the projects outputs to the wider European community. To ensure that the outputs were meeting the needs of the target audience, two Learning, Teaching and Training Activities (LTTAs) were orgainsed; the first a short-term joint staff training event focused on the required content and delivery techniques for output 1 (the curriculum) and the second a blended mobility of learners aimed at testing the developed curriculum with the target audience as well as brainstorming the requirements for output 2 (the web portal). Though CEJA were the main dissemination partner, all partners took an active role in the dissemination of the project outputs and continue to do so.The outputs of the project included a Level 5 (EQF) course curriculum (designed to increase the development of food entrepreneurs) and a web portal to provide a platform for interactive discussion and networking as well as to disseminate relevant information and documentation. The main purpose of this project was to help create future job creators. By developing an entrepreneurial mind set, the project helped to empower participants to see the potential for their own businesses. It is anticipated that as the outputs of the project continue to gain traction that more food producers will go on to become entrepreneurs and develop jobs not only for themselves but also provide job opportunities for others.The impacts of this project are far reaching and outputs are translated hence easily transferable. This is the first project to create a bespoke VET curriculum in the area of entrepreneurship aimed at those in the short food supply chain. By collaborating with European partners, the developed outputs benefitted from the contribution of a broader range of food entrepreneurs. GMIT has already integrated the curriculum into its teaching offering and has also successfully applied for further funding to roll the course out in Vietnam. UoB are also implementing the outputs. The web portal is now live and providing a platform for those involved in the short food chain supply to interact and connect. All partners have actively disseminated the project results.