Increasingly challenging global and environmental requirements have resulted in agricultural systems coming under increasing pressure to enhance their resilience capabilities in order to respond to the abrupt changes in resource quality, quantity and availability, especially during unexpected environmental circumstances, such as uncertain weather, pests and diseases, volatile market conditions and commodity prices. Therefore, integrated solutions are necessary to support the whole food agricultural life-cycle value chain. Solutions necessarily must consider the products’ cycle, as well as each of the value chain stages. Thus, managing risks and the uncertain availability of information will lead farmers to take advantage of these managerial, technical and social based-solutions. This implies the need for innovative technology-based knowledge management system to capture the agricultural information, at a variety of regional locations, in terms of collecting, storing, processing, and disseminating information about uncertain environmental conditions that affect agricultural decision-making production systems. Hence, from the genetic design of the seed, till their planting and harvest processes, RUCAPS provides knowledge of the full agricultural life-cycle based-decision making process to realise the key impacts of every stage of the agriculture-related processes. Therefore, RUCAPS implies the development of a high impact research project in order to integrate real-life based agriculture requirements, alternative land management scenarios, unexpected weather and environmental conditions as well as supporting innovation in the development of agriculture production systems, operations, logistics and supply chain management and the impact of these systems and processes over the end-users and customers. This is to be conceived through the integration of standard and customised solutions for facilitating the collaborative engagement within the agriculture value chain.

The DISARM thematic network (Disseminating Innovative Solutions for Antibiotic Resistance Management) is focused on disseminating best practices from innovative farms and research on how to reduce antibiotic resistance in livestock farming. Antibiotic resistance management is not only important to farming, it can also lead to reduced effectiveness of antibiotics in treating humans. Tackling antibiotic resistance is a major strategic challenge for European livestock farmers, an industry worth over 145billion euros. Evidence shows that rates of antibiotic use and resistance vary greatly from farm to farm and, that with the adoption of appropriate innovative on farm management practices that both the use of antibiotics and the development of resistance can be reduced. Disseminating these effective management practices is at the heart of the DISARM project, which will work with farmers, vets, advisors, industry and researchers to identify and disseminate widely the most cost effective and beneficial strategies. This will be delivered by: * Developing a 600 member multi-actor Community of Practice to share, debate and disseminate the most promising strategies to reduce antibiotic resistance in livestock farming; * Producing 10 best practice guides, supported by 100 best practice abstracts and 100 short videos to explain how farms have successfully adopted innovative practices to reduce antibiotic resistance; * Working with 40 farms (in 8 countries) to develop multi-actor farm health plans with at least 30 of these being used as case studies to show other farms how working with their vet, feed or equipment suppliers and advisory services can help them adopt a set of best practices suited to their farm; * Run 80 events to disseminate best practices, hosted by farmers or research centres or hosted by DISARM beneficiaries but resulting from an intensive collaboration between a DISARM beneficiary and stakeholders from the livestock industry and to speak at 60 further industry events; * Deliver 3 annual reports on the remaining challenges with antibiotic resistance which research or policy developments need to address.

The Data Driven Dairy Decisions for Farmers (4D4F) thematic network will focus on the role which dairy animal and environmental sensors can play in collecting real time information to help make more informed decisions in dairy farming. The network will develop a Community of Practice comprised of farmers, farm advisors, technology suppliers, knowledge exchange professionals and researchers who will work together to debate, collect and communicate best practice drawn from innovative farmers, industry and the research community to facilitate the co-creation of best practice. The results will be communicated to farmers using best practice guides on the use of sensors and data analysis tools supported by videos, infographics and an online virtual warehouse of dairy sensor technologies. The network will include the development of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) which can be tailored to individual farms to help farmers and farm advisors adopt dairy sensor and data analysis technology. The SOPs will be developed by working groups of the Community of Practice including farmers, farm advisors, technology suppliers, knowledge exchange professionals and researchers, who will work together to develop farmer friendly SOPs. The on line Community of Practice and published communication tools will be complimented by on farm events and workshops to help farmers and farm advisors implement innovative sensor and data analysis technologies. The workshops and events will promote discussion between farmers and their peers on how best to use sensors and data analysis in their own businesses. This will lead to local peer to peer support to facilitate the adoption of data driven dairy decision making. The network will work closely with EIP Agri and at member state level it will work with existing EIP Operational Groups working on dairy data and sensors and, where suitable Operational Groups do not exist, it will work with local partners to develop new Operational Groups.

EURAKNOS will boost compiling of knowledge ready for practice by intensifying interaction between various agri-food or forestry networks thereby maximising outputs for practitioners. The focus of this proposal is on widening existing thematic network outputs in an interactive way, both content-wise and in terms of geographical coverage. Avoiding duplication with the existing networks, cross-fertilisation will be organised between them and among countries, regions and production systems. EURAKNOS will tackle the data management with a view to ensure sustainability of these knowledge networks and maximise their outputs for end-users. To this end, EURAKNOS will stimulate the exchange of existing approaches, methodologies and tools between the different thematic networks (and linked EIP operational groups and H2020 multi-actor projects where relevant) and search for a harmonised approach for setting up future thematic networks in order to maximise the impact on the practitioner, farmer and forester. This project will also explore the end users’ needs and possibilities of setting-up a European agricultural knowledge and innovation open source system that may connect all TNs.

Over the past few decades, rural areas have experienced profound socio-demographic transformations, driven by their roles in ecological, digital, and bio-economic transitions. These transformations, further accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, have led to significant diversification, rendering rural regions complex and unequal—similar in many ways to major cities. Thus a key problem concerns our knowledge about- and perception of these places because the tools, concepts, and above all the public policies traditionally applied are no longer suited to address the increasing diversity of contemporary rural areas. Our consortium, RURALITIC, is academically armed and well-prepared and to tackle these challenges. The first step, involves rethinking ’the rural’ and examining the intricate relationship between social groups and geographical spaces. This conceptual requalification of what rural areas are, and can be, will enable the production of new scientific concepts and tools, including new data, surveys, indicators, knowledge and typologies, enabling a new and synthesized view of the current dynamics and processes of change and aid in foresight for public authorities. Secondly these new concepts and typologies will then be deployed to analyze the drivers of attractiveness, existing public policies, and innovative initiatives within rural areas. By implementing pilot projects and creating an initiative library, we’ll tailor recommendations to diverse social and rural contexts. Finally, RURALITIC aims to envision and produce various scenarios for Europe’s rural future. The main outcome will be a reorientation of public policies, from general policies to policies tailored to different rural areas, while maintaining the main orientations of European policies, focusing on sustainable prosperity, resilience, connectivity, and infrastructure.