ClimateSmartAdvisors is a pan-European multi-actor network covering 27 countries. Its aim is to boost the EU agricultural advisory community, leading to an acceleration of the adoption of climate smart (CS) farming practices by the wider farming community within and across EU AKISs. To reach this objective, ClimateSmartAdvisors focuses on the crucial role of advisors in the development and dissemination of CS innovations and practices. The project will organize activities focusing on strengthening the advisors’ capacity in providing CS advice and boosting the advisors’ role in the transition towards CS farming through their involvement in innovation projects, CS-AKIS, and EU projects and initiatives. A number of complementary activities are developed to strengthen the CS advisory capacity of the EU advisory community: 1) an EU-wide network of 260 advisory Communities of Practice (CoP) to support the development of 1500 advisors will form the core of CS knowledge exchange; 2) 140 advisors will receive expert training on selected topics, relevant for their context and for facilitating a CoP; 3) CoPs will internationally exchange knowledge on 12 thematic areas; 4) a knowledge repository will provide advisors with CS tools, practices and approaches developed in the ClimateFarmDemo project and further expanded in ClimateSmartAdvisors, 5) monitoring, evaluation and learning activities will capitalize lessons learned in and outside the project. Activities to boost the advisors role in the CS transition include: 1) connecting to local and EU (multi-actor innovation) projects, initiatives, AKIS actors, and policy makers to clarify and address joint needs, challenges and lessons learned, 2) the set-up of Co-Design Innovation Experiments to learn on how to strengthen the advisors’ role in innovation processes. Finally, to accelerate the wide spread of results, an ambitious dissemination, exploitation and communication strategy will be deployed at EU and national levels.

STARGATEs contribution beyond state-of-the-art in applied climatic data solutions is the implementation of analytics models to support local and regional policy formulation and implementation related to mitigation on microclimate changes. Currently, policy making organizations predominantly utilize own data, typically limited to their own jurisdiction/administrative area. However, once the policy development process expands the evidence base and data sources beyond the traditional approach, there is need for global data. The addition of national, European and even global reference data sets for comparative analysis — including meteorological, climatic analysis, satellite data sources to improve decision making processes. The studies at landscape scale are required to understand leading ecological processes. The focus will be on Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) and will extensively study the benefits of applying agri-environment-climate technical solutions to achieve sustainable agricultural development at landscape level. It means to support farm management modernization and at the same time get to know the underlying ecological factors that shape the farming landscape. STARGATE will leverage access to this data and also STARGATE climatic platform including developed models platforms to foster easy and affordable adoption by policy making bodies. The simples approach to decision support in policy development is effective visualization of data. Good visualization supports the policy developers’ in modelling sustainable policies and decisions. Unlike algorithmic simulation and modelling, visualization leaves the actual decision and assessment to a human user and thus provides an extra quality assurance before actual policy decisions are made. STARGATE provides innovative components for visualization of big data with a particular emphasis on geospatial visualization and advanced, dynamic charting.

The EU Farm to Fork strategy, which is at the heart of the European Green Deal, aims to make food systems fair, healthy, and environmentally friendly. To achieve the objectives of the Farm to Fork strategy, the Commission proposed, among other, new targets to reduce the use and risks of pesticides (RURP). The main objective of AdvisoryNetPEST is to establish and upgrade a network of advisory services across the EU, increasing the knowledge sharing between advisors, and among the whole AKIS, and the adoption of innovative solutions to RURP by farmers. The project will achieve this by: 1) Developing a EU network of advisors to RURP, based on existing networks and national AKIS, covering the 27 EU Members States (MSs) and the UK. To cover all MSs, the project will adopt a twinning approach: 14 National Networks will be created by the project partners, and these will engage with 14 Associated Networks through a twining program. The network will cover all European pedo-climatic areas, integrating four EU regional clusters and the most relevant crop sectors. 2) Identifying, selecting, and shaping Novel Approaches (NAs), which are technically, economically, socially, and environmentally viable, that will be adapted and replicated across the EU. 3) Exchanging knowledge and training advisors and students to promote the adoption of the NAs. 4) Connecting the project with other national and EU projects, initiatives and policy makers. 5) Scaling up the NAs, fostering the adoption of innovative solutions by farmers and the whole value chain. The project will embrace a multi-actor approach, gathering 19 partner organisations with a vast experience in advisory and crop protection. The consortium will also represent a diversity of AKIS stakeholders, including advisors, researchers, and other value chain actors, as the cornerstone of a regional, national, and EU level network that will allow a wide sharing of technical and practical expertise to RURP in the long-term.

The ‘IPM Decisions’ project proposed here will accelerate impact from farm Decision Support Systems (DSS) for IPM, as advocated in the Sustainable Use Directive. The impact of DSS in crop protection has been constrained by regional and sectoral fragmentation of actors, inadequate testing of DSS and quantification of their benefits, DSS addressing single pests whilst farmer decisions need to account for multiple pests, and DSS which are insufficiently risk-averse. We will address these constraints and enable innovation by creating a ‘one stop shop’ delivering DSS, data, tools and resources through a pan-European online Platform and an ‘IPM Decisions Network’. The latter forming a community of users and stakeholders. Users will be farmers and advisers, and applied research or industry organisations that deliver or develop DSS. Each type of user will access the Platform via a tailored Dashboard, specific to their requirements. The project consortium brings together multi-actor participants from research, crop protection industry, ICT, meteorological services, policy, farming, advisory and extension organisations. Participants in IPM Decisions are also participants in relevant European projects and networks, enabling efficient engagement and impact. The focus will be on delivering DSS for key pests of major outdoor crops. Integrating key examples of contrasting DSS on the Platform will address urgent needs and demonstrate that the Platform has the functionality required for wide impact. Longevity of the Platform and Dashboards beyond the life of the project will be aided by minimizing the resources required to maintain and update the system, and a realistic business plan. Software, scientific publications and research data will be open access. IPM Decisions addresses all the requirements of part A of SFS-06-2018-2020. The outcomes from this project will support the EU wide demonstration farm network to be established under part B of the call.

The Ploutos project focusses on rebalancing the value chain for the agri-food system, transforming it into one that works for the benefit of society and the environment. The project will develop a Sustainable Innovation Framework that follows a systemic approach to the agri-food sector, building on three pillars: Behavioural Innovation, Sustainable Collaborative Business Model Innovation and Data-driven Technology Innovation. Exploiting a history of significant agri-food projects and the respective ecosystems around these, the project will deploy 11 innovative systemic Sustainable Ιnnovation Pilots, where using a Multi-Actor Approach new innovative solutions and methodologies will be implemented, tested, assessed and derive practical lessons learned. The pilots cover a large range of agri-food ecosystems, across 13 countries, covering arable, horticulture (both open fields and greenhouses), perennials and dairy production among other. In each case, behaviour change, collaborative business modelling and data driven innovation will be integrated to deliver the most environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable solution. A Ploutos Innovation Academy will be established to as a vehicle for integrating the know-how, best practices and assessments developed across the project and derived from the Sustainable Innovation Pilots. Ploutos includes 33 partners, 23 of them being end-users, representing all relevant actors in the food system, including farmers, food industry companies, scientists, advisors, ICT specialists and policy makers.