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.

The natural environment is increasingly influenced by man due to the constant development of civilization. The soil belongs to those natural resources that are easily degraded, but at the same time, it is a fundamental value for man due to plant and animal production. In the era of today's climate change and its effects, it is essential, and even necessary, to disseminate the idea of agriculture, which aims to promote a sustainable farming system. It consists of the rational use of natural resources, which allows reducing the negative impact of agriculture on the environment and prevents the loss of organic matter in the soil. The issue of agricultural biologicalisation is a complex one, so productive, economic, and above all, social - although this dimension is still noticed in the human consciousness of the social masses on too small a scale. It is essential to conduct agricultural activity in a socially responsible manner. Trends related to environmental protection and respect for the climate force agriculture to conduct production using the latest technologies enabling the use of the smallest amount of chemistry, reduction of energy consumption in production and maintaining the transparency of operations.The project envisages cooperation in a broader dimension than in the case of the internal market - i.e. a single country. In this case, the aim is to develop a catalogue of best practices in the field of agricultural biologicalisation in three neighbouring countries - Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, using the resources of economic entities conducting agricultural activity on a market scale, which is even global, as this is the range of activity of a capital group having agricultural enterprises in these three countries and related to each other in the form of capital ownership. In this dimension, it is an innovative undertaking, in particular innovative in the field of organizational changes in solving significant economic and social problems that require implementation of the idea of agricultural biology in a wide range [i.e. a larger group of countries].The main goal of the project is to build a lasting partnership to raise awareness by improving the vocational training of agricultural workers in Europe. Achieving the goal will be possible through joint learning of the partners - exchange of experience, as well as confrontation of applied practices and methods. People of the world of science and practitioners from economic life were invited to cooperate. Such a composition of entities in the project makes it possible to achieve the assumed effects in the project, in particular, to define the catalogue of good agricultural biology practices and to spread this idea and practical solutions among a wide range of potential recipients in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The main objective of the project is to build a sustainable partnership for raising awareness by improving the vocational training of European agricultural practitioners.The project will be implemented from 12.2020 to 03.2022 (16 months). As part of the project, six - two/three-day project meetings will be held at each partner’s premises (in TOP FARMS in Poland, two in two different locations). The confrontation, knowledge and comparison of techniques and methods used in the cultivation of the land will enable obtaining information that will be useful both for project participants - persons responsible for planning and implementing agricultural production (learning in the workplace). Also for indirect participants, e.g. farmers cooperating with leading farms, even for Internet users, co-workers and full-time, part-time, postgraduate and doctoral studies. While the participation of key, leading farms in the project will result in immediate effects of biologicalisation of agricultural production in these farms, in principle in the long-term perspective, indirect effects seem to be even more important, because they will allow mass dissemination of effects across the entire national agriculture through imitation by subsequent farms in subsequent years.

Unsustainable agricultural practices are major drivers affecting habitat and species diversity in agricultural landscapes of the EU. However, peatland, grassland, and species associated with agriculture are of most concern. The ongoing negative impacts of unsustainable agricultural practices emphasize the need for a fully integrated approach between the EU 2030 Biodiversity and Farm to Fork Strategies. Supporting the EC`s ambition of enhancing biodiversity of agricultural landscapes advanced systems are required to monitor biodiversity features and their changes over time and in space. Such biodiversity monitoring systems will support implementation of result-based policies in the European agricultural landscapes. The BioMonitor4CAP project will design advanced biodiversity monitoring systems mainly assessing diversity of targeted species and habitats to be tested, calibrated, and demonstrated in five European regions representing the major agro-ecological regions of the EU and one region in Peru representing one of the global biodiversity hot spots. The project will combine classical indicator systems that are part of the European monitoring framework (e.g. Farmland Bird Index) with various indicator systems mostly recently developed and applied in form of standalone systems: i) new indicator species (e.g. grasshopper), ii) genetic diversity (eDNA), iii) on-site sensors (e.g. wing beat frequency, acoustic sounds), iv) functional diversity (e.g. pollinators), and iv) various spatial measures. Supporting development and implementation of revised agricultural policies and ensuring rural development the project will involve among multiple stakeholder groups particularly farmers, conservationists, and service provides as the value and/or marketability of public and/or private goods delivered through maintained and enhanced biodiversity and related monitoring systems are hardly understood.

The overall goal of the FOODPathS CSA project is to develop a ‘Prototype Partnership for Sustainable Food Systems (SFS) for people, planet and climate’. It endeavers a systems approach and aims a change of mindsets to accelerate the transition to SFS. The Prototype will serve as the first version of how the future Partnership will function. Hence, it encompasses all its components such as the i) innovative, effective and inclusive governance model and Modus operandi with aligned and committed co-funders, ii) Strategic Research & Innovation Agenda (SRIA) supporting Food2030 priorities including science-to-policy and education programs for FS, iii) European Hub of co-creating local FS Labs following a Code of Conduct and sustainability chart developed by a branded network of exemplary universities, iv) FS Network of local and global players with a toolkit for co-benefits and trade-off’s, v) new co-creation concepts, FS approach and Observatory. FOODPathS will not only present the Prototype in 2023/2024 but also accompany the future Partnership at its start by providing methodologies, (digital) tools, programs, working protocols and a dedicated multi-level, inclusive, governance model. . To accomplish this challenge, FOODPathS brings together 17 partners across Europe from funding organizations, public institutions, academia, research and education organisations, private and farming sectors (including SMEs), philanthropic organisations, NGO, and not-for-profit organisations. They all represent networks of potential co-funders, regional and , local policy makers, universities, private parties and farmers, consumers and civil society. Thanks to appropriate resources and events, all these necessary stakeholders along the food chain will be actively involved to shape the future FS Partnership.

Ecological approaches to farming practices are gaining interest across Europe. As this interest grows there is a pressing need to assess the potential contributions these practices may make, the contexts in which they function and their attractiveness to farmers as potential adopters. In particular, ecological agriculture must be assessed against the aim of promoting the improved performance and sustainability of farms, rural environment, rural societies and economies, together. The overall goal of LIFT is to identify the potentiel benefits of the adoption of ecological farming in the European Union (EU) and to understand how socio-economic and policy factors impact the adoption, performance and sustainability of ecological farming at various scales, from the level of the single farm to that of a territory. To meet this goal, LIFT will assess the determinants of adoption of ecological approaches, and evaluate the performance and overall sustainability of these approaches in comparison to more conventional agriculture across a range of farm systems and geographic scales. LIFT will also develop new private arrangements and policy instruments that could improve the adoption and subsequent performance and sustainability of the rural nexus. For this, LIFT will suggest an innovative framework for multi-scale sustainability assessment aimed at identifying critical paths toward the adoption of ecological approaches to enhance public goods and ecosystem services delivery. This will be achieved through the integration of transdisciplinary scientific knowledge and stakeholder expertise to co-develop innovative decision-support tools. The project will inform and support EU priorities relating to agriculture and the environment in order to promote the performance and sustainability of the combined rural system. At least 30 case studies will be performed in order to reflect the enormous variety in the socio-economic and bio-physical conditions for agriculture across the EU.