"<< Background >>Farmland occupies 40% of the area of the EU, and farming practices strongly influence biodiversity conservation, ecosystem service delivery, climate change and the quality of soil, air and water. We applied for this project because we detected that farmers all over Europe, in the context of Ecological Focus Areas (EFAs), were virtually applying only the indirect, low-value conservation actions (96,5%), such as catch crops or nitrogen fixing crops over the most direct, high-value conservation actions (only 3,5%), such as conservation of field margins, forests or ponds (non-productive agricultural lands, NPAL). Reports suggest that one of the reasons why direct conservation measures are avoided is a lack of understanding and/or know-how about 1) the many benefits of NPAL conservation for farming and its productivity: pollination, pest control, water regulation, climate change mitigation, etc 2) the importance of conserving these areas for nature, health and society. The current situation, combined with the lack of success of CAP's greening, threatens to deepen in the loss of biodiversity and ecosystemic services in the EU. Thus, we decided to design tools to build the capacity of farmers and agricultural techincians in such topics.<< Objectives >>The main objective of this project was to build the capacity of farmers and agricultural technicians (knowledge, practical tools and know-how) in the conservation of non-productive agricultural lands, in order to boost the implementation of the most direct and effective conservation actions. The specific objectives defined in the submission were:1) to elaborate free, open, tailored, high-quality, practical and complementary tools to build up theskills and empower farmers and their assessors and trainers. 2) to provide free, tailored, high quality (online*) trainings for the main stakeholders involved in theconservation of NPAL (non-productive agricultural lands, such as ponds, hedges, field margins or tree lines)3) to enhance the collaboration among farmers, agricultural and conservation technicians and otherstakeholders to preserve NPAL and make farmlands more resilient in general termsWe consider all the objectives have been achieved, despite the major budget change that the project suffered after the resolution. Maybe the largest change was the fact of changing the trainings from an online training platform to mostly face-to-face/practical, due to elimination of IO3 and IO4 and its budget.<< Implementation >>The main activities carried out were - 5 multiplying events, one per country, were conducted during the last 6 months of the project, to present the toolkit and the videos created during the project. 167 registered attendees, almost all of them were local/regional.- Dissemination activites: 7 dissemination activities, including talks, seminars and congresses were carried out during the project, to spread our views and boost the impact of our initiative, had about 100 attendees (online and face-to-face)- 10 training sessions were celebrated in 5 countires, (several of them of two days of lenght), 120 participants registered.- 4 volunteering sessions, involving 55 people were conducted to implement designs of modification or creation of NPALs in agricultural estates, carried out in Italy and Spain.- 3 Learning-Teaching-Training Activities involving more than 20 people were carried out to assess and give an external vision to the coordination team in ofder to produce the most adequate and well-balanced material possible. (Spain, Romania and France)All the activities were used to gather feedback in order to improve or re-align the goals and products created during the project.<< Results >>The main output was a the creation of a 150-page toolkit for farmers and agricultural technicians named ""Farming benefits of nature conservation"" in 7 languages (despite 6 were intially defined [English, Spanish, French, Italian, Czech and Romanian] we added Catalan as well). Initially we suggested to create two different toolkits, but the agency suggested to do one for both targets. After the resolution of the project, the toolkits were intended to be only digital, but were finally printed in spanish and catalan (about 300 copies) thanks to the financial support of the Agriculture Department of Catalonia. As a complement, powerpoint presentations (used in the face-to-face trainings conducted) were created as support material and are available as summaries of the main tools in several languages (http://resifarms.eu/toolkit/)The second most important output was the creation of four videos, recorded in the 5 countries participating in the project (subtitled in seven languages) and related to the main tools of the toolkit (ponds; hedgerows; open spaces; and ""biodiversity, the core of agriculture""). The videos had the goal of explaining in a more simple, visual and exemplified way the contents of the most important tools created."

Rangeland livestock farming systems (RLFS), despite facing challenges, play a significant role in achieving the sustainable development goals in Europe. Although RLFS have an important role in the transition towards the European Green Deal, with the provision of crucial ecosystem services, they still require support, including extension services, farmer to farmer network and participatory monitoring and evaluation. The use of innovative technologies has an important role to play and take part of a wider bundle of measures required to improve the future viability of such farming systems. DIGI-Rangeland network aims to create and expand an innovative network about digital innovations and data technologies with actors (farmers and other land-users) facing challenges in rangeland territories at regional, national, and European levels. Based on a multi-actor approach, the project aims to increase knowledge sharing and mutual understanding between EU stakeholders, and foster cross-fertilization between rangeland areas actors around the use of digital technologies and innovations (DTI). To achieve this, partners in 10 countries will be involved in: a) setting up an EU network with farmers groups, land-users, 10 innovation and demonstration HUBs, and important stakeholders in the 10 rural-AKIS; b) identifying, prioritising, and analysing needs, obstacles and expectations from farmers and land-users; c) identifying and analysing DTI solutions matching the needs of the RLFS farmers and other land-users; d) evaluating and assessing solutions and barriers, to foster DTI adoption within RFLS; e) improving knowledge level with a range of scaling activities, demonstrations, and training, for farmers, advisors, students, land-users. Partners will prepare and implement communication and dissemination activities through trusted channels to maximise the impact of the project’s outputs.

AgriSPIN: creating SPace for INnovation The project name reflects the overall aim of this project: to strengthen support systems in creating space for innovating farmers. Innovative farmers are everywhere, but their environment determines the rate of success. The project aims to create more space for innovations, through amplifying good examples of innovation support systems and through multi-actor learning about ways to stimulate innovation and remove obstacles. The main target group is intermediates who connect initiators to other actors for involving them in creating innovations, such as farmers, knowledge workers, actors in the value chain, administrators, civil society groups, etc.. 11 European project partners are playing this intermediate role in their regional AKIS. 4 scientific partners complete the team. Each regional partner will host a Cross Visit. The visiting team, composed of project partners, studies interesting cases of agricultural innovations. The scientists provide sound methodology for making these visits valuable. Throughout the project period partners support each other in an emerging professional innovation network. They inspire each other and initiate improvements in their own systems. The project also addresses the institutional environment, involving public managers, administrators and policy makers. Case studies and lessons learned are made available to a wider public. Attention will be given to cultural and historical particularities, requiring tailor made solutions for every region. The scientists explore lessons to be generalised and added to the scientific discourse on knowledge brokers. Once the approach of joint learning through Cross Visits has been well tested and the professional network is functional, the project is ready for collaboration with other partners such as thematic networks and operational groups under the EIP as well as other interested regions in joint learning about innovation support systems.

The European agricultural land areas provide important and valuable goods in the form of food, fibre and biomass for the world. They are also crucial for the provision of a number of environmental and climate goods and services. EU member states have implemented agri-environmental schemes, investment grants for environmental technologies, and private actors have established environmental certification and labeling schemes targeting these services. However, many initiatives are arguably not cost-effective in boosting environmental and climate service provision, may be skewed in terms of distributional impacts, increase risks to farmers, or involve excessive transaction costs. EFFECT will develop and pilot a theoretically well-founded and empirically well-adapted package of new contractual frameworks. This will enable farmers to reconcile agricultural production with enhanced delivery of environmental and climate public goods and services to the benefit of society at large. EFFECT pursues this through a transdisciplinary effort involving a review of past successes and failures; and development and test of new forms of contracts. We combine agricultural and environmental science knowledge with theoretical and empirical insights from law, political science and economics. We further combine efforts from researchers and multiple practice partners and stakeholders to ensure that lessons learned from previous initiatives and our testing of emerging contract frameworks are validated on the ground. Our ambition, which is based in the solid experience in the consortium, is to facilitate that our co-developed agri-environmental contract arrangements are being put to actual use towards the end of the project. Furthermore, to ensure durable impact of the project, EFFECT initiates a cross European innovation process, supports capacity building among decision making bodies and develops a policy evaluation framework.

The overall objective of EUNetHorse is to establish an active multi-stakeholder network in France, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Germany, Romania, Poland, Finland, in order to increase the resilience and performance of their equine farms to face environmental, social, health, economic or political crises by widely disseminating practices, tools and solutions that improve (1) their resilience and socio-economic performance, (2) animal welfare and health on farms, and (3) the environmental sustainability of the sector. To achieve this, EUNetHorse will i) increase the flow of practical information between farmers in these 8 countries in a geographically balanced way and taking into account the differences between territories by structuring National-Horse AKISs in each country ii) collect and assess grassroots solutions and practices; disseminate best practices and solutions on the three thematic areas mentioned aboved replying to specific needs iii) achieve a greater user acceptance of the collected solutions and best practices through cross-fertilisation between all actors of the sector (horse breeders, advisors, trainers, technical experts, scientists, policy makers, sector representatives, etc. ) and all levels (local, regional, national and European) during exchange activities allowing peer-to-peer learning such as workshops, demonstration days, training and cross visits. v) maintain the practical knowledge in the long term - beyond the project period - by sharing the full set of project results on the EUFarmbook platform accessible to all, by training advisors and trainers during the project on these topics, by setting up a sustainable network of trainers and advisors who can continue to train equine farmers and disseminate these solutions using the training kit made available through their activities with equine farmers.