AgRibot is a groundbreaking project aimed at advancing robotics as well as augmented and extended reality (AR/XR) technologies within the agricultural sector. The project’s overarching goal is to achieve a range of critical impacts including: improving working conditions, reducing environmental footprint, addressing workforce shortages, and enhancing overall sustainability and competitiveness. In alignment with strategic initiatives such as the Farm-to-Fork Strategy, the Common Agricultural Policy post-2022, and the broader ambition of embracing the Digital Age, AgRibot is poised to drive a transformative shift toward a fair, safer, and resilient agriculture sector.

The recent variations in the price of fossil fuels and mineral fertilisers in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine threaten the incomes of primary producers and affordability of food for consumers. This threat will remain, as the pathway towards fossil fuel independence and related investments in less fossil-fuel-intensive technologies in the EU agricultural sector will take time. All this shows that there is an urgent need to design realistic, sustainable pathways for supporting the energy transition of the European agricultural sector and improving the income of primary producers. AgEnRes designs sustainable pathways for policy making to reduce direct and indirect dependence of farmers and the agricultural sector as a whole on fossil fuels and fertilisers, and increase the resilience to volatile energy prices, taking into account farmers’ behaviour and the synergies and trade-offs between European economic and environmental objectives at micro- and macro-level. Our approach consists of three components supported by outreach activities, which involve stakeholders and the general public throughout the project's lifespan. The first component develops a conceptual and data framework to identify policy targets and measures, promising technologies, and data and model requirements. Component one results among others in an EU wide database on energy use and mitigation potentials at different scales. The second component focuses on evidence of the past and present energy dependence of the European agricultural sector and preferred solutions. The third component builds on the first two and incorporates them into a set of foresight models at farm, regional, and market levels to evaluate the impacts of innovations and policy measures and targets at different scales. Ultimately, AgEnRes develops an innovative toolbox that will decrease the energy dependence and strengthen the resilience of the European agricultural sector.

Objective: Set up cost effective innovative sensor networks that can be financed by climate services built on top of these networks. Concept: Transformative new methods to measure five essential hydrological variables (rainfall, soil moisture, river flow, bathymetry) at less than 10% of current costs. These reduced costs are essential to have realistic business models for services that cover the costs of building and operating the networks. The five essential variables will be available through GEOSS. Innovation: Seven new sensing methods will be introduced in Africa. The innovation does not focus only on moving up Technology Readiness Levels of new measuring methods but, especially, on the usefulness and practical applicability of these methods in the specific contexts. The direct linkage of sensors and new value-creating services is part of this innovation because this is essential for long-term financial sustainability. New services assimilate in situ and satellite data in numerical models to make optimal use of strengths of different sources of information. Knowledge of the African market: Building on earlier research-oriented projects and on experience in development of geo-services in Africa, in-depth knowledge of the opportunities and limitations of the African market is widely available within the consortium. Selection of focus services was based on this knowledge. These focus services are Flood Early Warning Systems, reservoir management, and crop germination insurance. These have been selected as the most promising services in the broader climate-oriented areas of geo-hazards, water management, and agricultural information.

SystR will propose a groundbreaking approach to feed the science-policy nexus with innovative solutions to address systemic risks (interconnection between multiple sectors and stakeholders and resulting cascading climate impacts). This approach will accelerate transformative adaptation and avoid maladaptation by breaking silos, harmonising multiple scales of governance and tailoring solutions to local needs and strengths with Smart Specialisation Strategies. SystR will deliver a set of innovative results that will collectively strengthen the systemic resilience of the 6 multi-scale regions and communities involved and have a long lasting impact: 1. An Adaptation Support tool targeting the process of systemic adaptation based on the P2R project Regional Resilience Journey 2. A Community Empowerment framework for actively mobilising a diversity of actors across the value chain into the development and testing of transformative solutions, fit to address local climate and aggravating systemic vulnerabilities and risks 3. Novel systemic Governance schemes to improve cooperation at multiple scales 4. Coherent Financial roadmaps to determine how to finance identified resilience solutions and strategies 5. Design, with the support of the digital Visualisation tools, and implement Integrated Ecosystem of Resilience Solutions, integrating the cross sectorial enabling and systemic physical solutions including NBS 6. Accelerate the uptake of its results for critical mass creation, through the Upscaling toolbox and the One Stop Shop, the SystR’s results aggregator. Overall, while pursuing close collaboration with the Climate Adaptation Mission, SystR will demonstrate systemic resilience in three contexts most representative of Europe: coastal in Guadeloupe-France, rural in Bystrica-Slovakia and urban in Rome-Italy, which will be twinned with replication sites of similar challenges, Galicia, Strasbourg and Egaleo, respectively.

In the last years, extreme weather patterns of water scarcity (droughts) and water abundance (floods, rapid showers) are becoming more frequent and prolonged in the EU. If we do not remedy this situation, by 2050 water scarcity will lead to €12,2 billion losses per year and affect 17% of EU population. RAINS will contribute to improve the resilience of EU agriculture to water scarcity by demonstrating 10 solutions (irrigation practices, technologies and tools) that will increase the efficiency of water and nutrient management in agriculture and reduce the impact of extreme weather events. RAINS solutions include alternative forms of water supply, combined use of water and biofertilisers, improved soil water-retention, water-N/P modelling and some smart solutions (Optifangs-IA, WaterIQ) to contribute to decision-making and to integrated irrigation management across farm systems. Solutions will be demonstrated at 10 demo-farm systems representing agroecology, organic production, conventional, intensive and urban agriculture, replicated in Greece and Spain. We will also develop a hydrological and N/P model to optimised agriculture production at catchment level. A well, we will conduct co-creation workshops, knowledge transfer activities and create materials such as guidelines (2), White Papers (2) and Practice Abstracts (40). Policy focused sessions will deliver 3 sets of policy and incentives recommendations, engaging quadruple helix agricultural stakeholders, to pave the way for the uptake of sustainable irrigation and fertilization management solutions in practice in the EU. In the long term, RAINS will contribute to improve water efficiency by 50% in 12,700 ha. in more than 20 EU regions, and support >500 farmers in the transition to a more sustainable irrigation. And by 2050, the implementation of the RAINS project will save up to €6.1 billion, 244.348 million litres of water and 35.4 t CO2 eq. avoided emissions.