CARINA is built on a multi-actor consortium and participative decision-making process through mutual learning, transparent communication, and inclusive multi-perspectives and transdisciplinary engagement. From the proposal clearly emerges the importance of social innovation as the nerve center for the evolution of the whole project. Nine Lighthouses, 5 Living Labs, and 9 Policy Innovation Labs will be established across Europe playing a leading role in the co-creation of CARINA innovation actions. CARINA focuses on new sustainable and diversified farming systems including 2 new oilseed crops, carinata and camelina, able to provide multiple low iLUC feedstocks for the bio-based economy. We firmly believe that a participatory approach is necessary for successfully scaling-up innovative farming systems. Engaging farmers and other stakeholders in jointly developing solutions under specific environmental, technical, and social conditions has been highly considered in CARINA. We estimate about 3M farmers being potentially reached by CARINA thanks to the direct cooperation with its partners. To find a broad consensus by primary producers, a new crop should enable to promote and harness biodiversity, be easy-to-grow, and technically feasible within current cropping systems. Carinata and camelina fully meet these requirements, able to successfully grow almost everywhere in Europe and in northern Africa. Carinata and camelina provide high quality oils that will be transformed into innovative bio-based products (bioherbicides, bioplastics). The co-product from oil extraction is a protein-rich cake, which will be valorized as animal feed, and in a multitude of high added-value products, exploiting the mucilage and glucosinolates contained within. CARINA capitalizes on a highly experienced team of 20 partners, +6 affiliated entities, from 13 EU and Associated Countries (Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Greece, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Poland, UK, Serbia, Tunisia, Morocco, Switzerland).

GRASS Ceiling will develop a context where women can drive socio-ecological transitions, that is, develop innovations in response to socio-ecological challenges and strengthen the resilience of rural areas. This is essential to deliver the UN’s goals on gender parity, realise the EU gender equality strategy, and achieve the goals of the Green Deal, the Farm to Fork strategy, the Long-Term Vision for Rural Areas and the European Pillar of Social Rights. GRASS CEILING is a multi-actor project that will increase women-led socio-ecological innovations in farming, the rural economy and in rural communities (i.e., smart-agri skills, eco-tourism, pasture led agriculture, organic cheese, energy neutral village halls, community gardens, elderly care cooperatives). Socio-ecological innovation in farming and rural areas is a developing area in Europe, and GRASS Ceiling will co-create tools to ensure women can fully participate. Our consortia include end-users (women innovators), stakeholders and researchers in case study Member States, as well as European bodies and stakeholders who can influence EU policy such as the EU Women’s Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP), Copa-Cogeca (EU representatives of farmers and agri-cooperatives), The European Association for Information on Local Development (AEIDL), and the European Environmental Bureau (EEB). GRASS Ceiling brings together leading academic partners with many years of experience in research and practice projects that seek to empower and support women in agriculture and rural areas throughout a variety of contexts in Europe. The project involves women-innovators on farms and in rural areas who will participate in our 9 socio-ecological women innovator living labs in 9 case study countries. Our Living Labs are practical, women-led, interactive innovation initiatives that will increase knowledge and provide tools to assist women innovators and policy and support organisations at Member State and EU level.

Supporting the deployment of AGRIvoltaics to accelerate the sustainable market uptake of SOLar energy in agriculture within a 36-month project that engages experienced partners across five EU states (Greece, Italy, Spain, Demark and Poland). The project aims to support at least 30 PV market actors, farmers, farmers associations, agribusinesses, etc. in EU countries to overcome existing barriers and viably take up APV systems in their lands. We start by analysing framework conditions and APV value chains and we are also engaging local stakeholders in co-designing our approach and support actions. Then, we provide a series of demand-driven business, financial and technical support services along with dedicated capactiy building programs. In parallel we develop an Engagement Platform hosting tools that facilitate collaboration and knowlede exhange among industry actors and provide credible estimations about; APV potential, prospect profits with benefits and APV policy making level across various EU countries and critical factors. Also, we improve the societal acceptance of APV amongst farmers and citizens by 25% (or above) through well-tailored awareness-raising campaigns and social impact methodologies. At the same time, we trigger the development of an enabling environment for the market uptake of APV by formulating relevant policy recommendations at both national and EU level and widely disseminating them to more than 100 policymakers. Finally, an ESG monitoring and evaluation framework evaluates the performance and impact of all the above, ensuring the long term sustainability of our solutions and providing us with the intel required to catalyse mutual learning and contribute to creating a guide for replicating our results. Therefore, we expect a power output of 50 MWel by our supported cases / projects, leading to an increased share of renewable energy in the final energy consumption in the target countries and ultimately, saving more than 0.5 million tn of GHG.

Non-food Crops (NFC) are used to produce a wide range of bio-products and bioenergy. In spite of considerable investment in R&D and the increasing need of bio-based industries for feedstock, NFCs are not widespread in EU agriculture, mainly due to challenges in supply chains and gaps in policy framework and investment incentives. PANACEA aims to set up a thematic network to foster the effective exchange between research, industry and the farming community so that direct applicable solutions are widely disseminated and grassroots-level needs and innovative ideas thoroughly captured in order to design the penetration path of NFC into European agriculture. To achieve this goal, an inventory of long-term scientific results on the NFC sustainable production will be created building on the profound experience of the consortium, and the NFC close to implementation will be identified (WP1). Combining the farmers’ and bio-based industries’ needs and interests (WP2) with the NFC ready-to-practice potential the role of NFC in the rural renaissance will be analysed. A strong and interactive multi-actor forum will be established with actors from science, industry and agricultural practice to facilitate capturing and spreading of innovative ideas (WP3). Practice-oriented knowledge on specific value chains easily accessible and available in the long term will be assured through training courses and relevant educational material (WP4). Knowledge sharing on technical, economic and environmental aspects of NFC, extensive communication and networking, matching between the supply and demand sides will be facilitated by the PANACEA Platform (WP5). The project findings will be disseminated at large following an extended exploitation and dissemination plan that will be active during the project and beyond and ensure the sustainability of the ‘Thematic Network on Non-food Crops’ through its link with EU wide initiatives, the EIP-AGRI and its Operational Groups (WP6).

SHIP2FAIR aims to foster the integration of solar heat in industrial processes (SHIP) from the agro–food sector, by developing and demonstrating a set of tools and methods for the development of industrial solar heat projects during its whole life-cycle. Thus, the project results will consist in a (1) Replication tool for easily assessing the techno-economic feasibility of a SHIP project and supporting its design; (2) a Control tool understand as a DSS to support the operation of the complete process, (3) a comprehensive guide for supporting stakeholders in the design, commissioning and operation of their SHIP projects, and (4) a complete capacity building program, addressing both professionals and students interested in SHIP applications in the agro-food sector. These results will be demonstrated and validated at 4 demo-sites, including representative use cases of the agro-food sector like spirits distillation (Martini & Rossi), ham drying (ABC Industries), sugar boiling (RAR Group) and wine fermentation and stabilization (RODA Wineries). As a results of this demonstration, SHIP2FAIR, aims to achieve up to a 40% of solar fraction with a total of 2.9 kW of installed power for producing 4.04 GWh and allowing 403 m3 of fossil fuels and 1,145 TeqCO2 per year. In order to fulfil these challenges a competitive consortium of EU leading entities has been gathered including 4 RTOs (CIRCE, CEA, ISMB and BE2020) 2 Engineering companies (RINA-C and SOLID), 2 Solar Technology Providers (TVP and ISG) and, 4 agro-food companies already mentioned, 2 sectorial associations (EUREC and SCOOP) and one Utility (EDF), addressing the complete SHIP projects value-chain.