The DIVERCROP project aims to highlights interactions between current dynamics of the Mediterranean agricultural practices, species diversity and local food systems at multiple spatial scales. The main assumption is 1) that the current land use dynamics in Mediterranean area may enhance, in many cases, situations of land use pattern diversity (inside agricultural areas with changes in agricultural practices, in perirurban situations with the competition between agricultural and urban uses or in semi-natural areas used by extensive farming systems), and 2) this diversity is an indicator of places where, on one hand, evolutions of the couple ecosystems/agricultural systems could be the foundations of a new sustainable agriculture and, one other hand there is an ability to develop local food systems (an homogenous area of monospecific agriculture isn’t usually in favor of the new farming systems integration). So, an assessment of the land use diversity processes and related changes occurring on the Mediterranean area (e.g. intensification, extensification, urbanization and land abandonment) and their drivers (geographical, agronomical and socio-economic) will be carried out. From this framework, we will evaluate how these changes impact the agricultural and species diversity at different spatial scales, and how this measure of diversity allows to locate areas that should potentially experience an enhancement of local food systems. In order to better focus our analysis, we will concentrate this project on the Western part of the Mediterranean Basin (WMB) where we will develop and test a methodology to connect the local and the regional scales in a feedback process. The project is composed of the following steps: • • An assessment of the current spatial agricultural dynamics, competition between agriculture and other land uses and between different agricultural management practices, from which the main drivers will be carried out at the WMB scale. • An identification of local drivers of territorial dynamics in terms of governance and stakeholders’ behavior, through studying specific case studies sampled according to spatial trends and management drivers. • The development of a multi-scale model that investigate the consequences of local and regional land system changes on agricultural practices and species diversity, and on the spatial capabilities for cities to enhance local food systems. In order to address our scientific and technological ambitious objectives, DIVERCROP gathers a multi-disciplinary team of researchers from different fields covering both spatial quantitative approaches including planning sciences, landscape ecology, landscape agronomy and biophysics and qualitative approaches such as sociology and human geography.

The new European Commission launched the European Green Deal last autumn as one of its key policies. Among the various strategies, Biodiversity 2030 and Farm to Fork are of tremendous importance for France that has placed sustainability of its agri-food system as one of its priorities. For the past two years, INRAE has brought together the European research community around the vision of an agriculture free of chemical pesticides. This community of now 34 members from 20 European countries joined forces to create the European Research Alliance “Towards a Chemical Pesticide-free Agriculture” (hereafter referred to as “the Alliance”). Through regular exchanges with European Commission services, the Alliance highlighted the need to address this issue that appeared as a target both in the Biodiversity 2030 and Farm to Fork strategies. In order to support the ambition and to strengthen the position of France in this domain, INRAE decided to lead the proposal from the Alliance “” on the call LC-GD-6-1-2020 Topic title: Testing and demonstrating systemic innovations in support of the Farm-to-Fork Strategy, scope C. This project will strongly rely on the implication of actors all across Europe with almost 75% of the members states covered in this project. It will be first based on the identification of pluri-disciplinary innovative solutions, technical (e.g. precision agriculture, robotics…) agronomic (e.g. agroecology, rotation, diversification…), biological (e.g. genetics/varieties, biocontrol, biostimulants…) but also socio-economic (e.g. governance, supply chain organization, willingness to pay by consumers, regulatory …), and their optimization to foster potential synergies. It will then strongly rely on demonstrating the relevance and feasibility of these solutions, i.e. documenting their actual impact on the reduction of pesticides and fertiliser uses, with common metrics such as the methodology created in the French CEPP design (certificats d'économie de produits phytopharmaceutiques), as well as on the monitoring of their impact in real-life situation thanks to the dense network of experimental facilities from the Alliance members as well as their connections with other national or European farm networks. Companies providing new options (varieties with better disease resistance and fertiliser use efficiency, biocontrol, digitalisation, machineries) will be included into the consortium. The precise assessment of the economic impact and the analysis of the barriers limiting the implementation of these solutions and the strong dissemination targeted to relevant actors will allow empowerment of the actors and scaling up alternative protecting methods that will reduce pesticide use. Regular exchanges with local, national and European decision makers will allow supporting the implementation of the identified technical or socio-economic solutions. Ultimately this global approach will give access to new potential solutions adapted to local conditions that could undergo the same optimization, testing, dissemination steps. This approach was built using the backward construction of impact pathways. This ex-ante methodology will be further developed in order to maximize the impact potential of the project. Furthermore, to allow dynamic evolution of the project throughout its life, a real-time analysis of the impact will be conducted (in-itinere) using the recognized ASIRPArt methodology.

The main objective of the RoboCom++ proposal is to lay the foundation for a future global interdisciplinary research programme (e.g., a FET-Flagship project) on a new science-based transformative Robotics, to be launched by the end of the H2020 Programme. RoboCom++ will gather the community and organise the knowledge necessary to rethink the design principles and fabrication technologies of future robots. RoboCom++ will aim at developing the cooperative robots (or Companion Robots) of the year 2030, by fostering a deeply multidisciplinary, transnational and federated effort. The mechatronic paradigm adopted today, although successful, may prevent a wider use of robotic systems. For example, system complexity increases with functions, leading to more than linearly increasing costs and power usage and decreasing robustness. RoboCom++ will pursue a radically new design paradigm, grounded in the scientific studies of intelligence in nature. This approach will allow achieving complex functionalities in a new bodyware with limited use of computing resources, mass and energy, with the aim of exploiting compliance instead of fighting it. Simplification mechanisms will be based on the concepts of embodied intelligence, morphological computation, simplexity, and evolutionary and developmental approaches. Exploring these concepts in order to develop new scientific knowledge and new robots that can effectively negotiate natural environments, better interact with human beings, and provide services and support in a variety of real-world, real-life activities, requires a coordinated and federated initiative. Ultimately, the Companion Robots conceived in RoboCom++ may foster a new wave of economic growth in Europe by boosting the deployment of ubiquitous robots and web-based robotic services. The RoboCom++ community will pursue these ambitious objectives by cooperating along three main lines of action: 1) building the community and the tools for research reproducibility (benchmarks, metrics, data sharing protocols, test platforms, standards); 2) proof-of-concept research pilots; and 3) defining the long-term S&T roadmap, competitiveness strategy, governing and financing structure, and the ethical, legal, economic and social framework of a future FET Flagship –like initiative on Robotics . RoboCom++ will actively pursue collaboration with industry, along with dissemination, community outreach and participation of EU citizens and stakeholders, with particular attention to the issue of robots and jobs, and to the analysis and proposition of viable policy options.