The New Delivery Model established in Regulation EU 2115/2021 entails significant changes to Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) governance with the introduction of Strategic Plans and new monitoring, review and evaluation requirements. The CAP is expected to contribute significantly to the Green Deal’s ambitions, securing the achievement of sustainability and resilience goals for the EU’s Agri-food systems. Innovative governance models are essential to enable result-based policymaking to deliver the best policy pathways to facilitate the green transition. Tools4CAP will (1) support the implementation of National Strategic Plans 2023-2027, and (2) lay the foundations for sound preparation of Post-2027 Strategic Plans. Accordingly, Tools4CAP establishes a flexible and participatory Coordination & Support Action designed to boost learning, exchange processes, and adoption of innovative solutions and good practices for the design, monitoring and evaluation of CAP Strategic Plans. Tools4CAP’s methods and tools will cover three key areas: (1) quantitative modelling tools for ex-ante and ex-post evaluations, (2) participatory and multi-governance decision tools, and (3) novel data and monitoring solutions. The project will deliver a comprehensive inventory of methods and tools used in the 27 Member States, methodological guidelines on innovative solutions and a Handbook of good practices. Results will be integrated in a Capacity Building Toolkit, designed to enhance science-policy interfaces. Tools4CAP utilises a Stakeholder Engagement Platform to boost bottom-up adaptation of innovative methods and tools. It will establish a Replication Lab to demonstrate their use in 10 Member States and to promote their uptake across the EU-27. The project will also set up a Capacity Building Hub to help end-users (ministries, management authorities, paying agencies, other stakeholders) reinforce their capacity to use innovative tools, including models used by the European Commission.

Agriculture soils are being heavily affected by climate change and are highly vulnerable to degradation and desertification, particularly in the Mediterranean and southern regions of the EU. If climate change is not mitigated, yields of crops like wheat, maize and sugar beet could decrease in southern EU by up to 50 % by 2050. Although agriculture has been signalled as a significant contributor to GHG emissions (13% of EU total emissions), it is also one of the sectors with the biggest potential to adapt to and mitigate climate change. In this sense, Carbon Farming appears as a promising solution for soils’ health and for the sustainability of EU agriculture. LILAS4SOILS will put in place 5 Living Labs (LLs) in 6 countries to co-create the adoption of Carbon Farming solutions within farmers, agri-food businesses, researchers and local authorities, and implement Carbon Farming Practices -CFPs- (peatland management, agroforestry, livestock and manure management, and nutrient management, maintaining soil organic carbon) in 85-100 demo-sites. CFPs impact on soil carbon sequestration and environmental co-benefits will be assessed through the adoption of homogeneous Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) technologies. The 5-year project involves 24 expert partners, +25 stakeholders will part of each LL for interdisciplinary knowledge exchange (20 co-creation workshops to be held) and +71 farmers will be engaged in CFPs implementation, ensuring the multi-actor approach. 10 training workshops (supported by 21 materials), 10 policy workshops (supported by 2 sets of recommendations per LL), 8 cross-fertilisation and synergies workshops and 2 replication workshops within other regions in EU are envisaged as part of the project's focus on knowledge transfer. Through directed Open Calls, LILAS4SOILS will encourage the participation of 35-50 additional farmers and support the testing of 15 MRV innovative technologies that overcome the limitations of the conventional ones.

WASTE2FUELS aims to develop next generation biofuel technologies capable of converting agrofood waste (AFW) streams into high quality biobutanol. Butanol is one of the most promising biofuels due to its superior fuel properties compared to current main biofuels, bioethanol and biodiesel. In addition to its ability to reduce carbon emissions, its higher energy content (almost 30% more than ethanol), its ability to blend with both gasoline and diesel, its lower risk of separation and corrosion, its resistance to water absorption, allowing it to be transported in pipes and carriers used by gasoline, it offers a very exciting advantage for adoption as engines require almost no modifications to use it. The main WASTE2FUELS innovations include: • Development of novel pretreatment methods for converting AFW to an appropriate feedstock for biobutanol production thus dramatically enlarging current available biomass for biofuels production • Genetically modified microorganisms for enhancing conversion efficiencies of the biobutanol fermentation process • Coupled recovery and biofilm reactor systems for enhancing conversion efficiencies of Acetone-Butanol-Ethanol fermentation • Development of new routes for biobutanol production via ethanol catalytic conversion • Biobutanol engine tests and ecotoxicological assessment of the produced biobutanol • Valorisation of the process by-products • Development of an integrated model to optimise the waste-to-biofuel conversion and facilitate the industrial scale-up • Process fingerprint analysis by environmental and techno-economic assessment • Biomass supply chain study and design of a waste management strategy for rural development By valorising 50% of the unavoidable and undervalorised AFW as feedstock for biobutanol production, WASTE2FUELS could divert up to 45 M tonnes of food waste from EU landfills, preventing 18 M tonnes of GHG and saving almost 0.5 billion litres of fossil fuels.

Agricultural policies are widening the scope to contribute to environmental objectives, the Paris climate agreement and the SDG’s. Furthermore, Member States develop their national strategic plans with more attention to the regional implementation of the CAP. Broadening of scope will increase the amount of indicators for monitoring and evaluation. In the current situation, agricultural statistics (among others FSS and FADN) and administrative data (i.e. IACS) are used for monitoring and evaluation. To address the broadening set of needs, it becomes essential to make use of the possibilities of satellite data and sensor data and the increased amount of information flows within the agricultural sector. Despite these new opportunities, it will not be possible to provide all data needs with these new technologies, so there will still be a role for agricultural statistics and farmers’ willingness to give access to data owned by the farmer. MEF4CAP will make an inventory of future data needs, describe the current developments in ICT and data capturing techniques and assess the technological readiness of these solutions. MEF4CAP will make intensive use of workshops and stakeholder interaction to identify best practices, ensure the inclusion of all relevant developments and to discuss the potential of widening their application. MEF4CAP will deliver a roadmap for future monitoring, where the needs of different stakeholders are met and the potential of different approaches is fully exploited, while minimizing the costs and administrative burden and optimizing the value of the collected data. MEF4CAP will strongly benefit from the broad composition of the project team. MEF4CAP will bring together experts on the current agricultural statistics, current administrative systems, evaluations for policy making and on farm advisory as well as experts on remote sensing, sensor data, ICT developments and developments of information flows in the agricultural sector.

Continuing population and consumption growth are driving global food demand, with agricultural activity increasing to keep pace. Europe has a major agricultural waste problem, generating some 700 million tonnes of waste annually. There is an urgent need and huge opportunity to address the efficient use of agricultural wastes, co-products and by-products (AWCB) towards delivering sustainable value chains in the farming and processing sectors. As such, AgroCycle will convert low value agricultural waste into highly valuable products, achieving a 10% increase in waste recycling and valorisation by 2020. This will be achieved by developing a detailed and holistic understanding of the waste streams and piloting a key number of waste utilisation/valorisation pathways. It will bring technologies and systems from ~TRL4 to ~TRL7 within the 3 years of the project. A post-project commercialisation plan will bring commercially promising technologies/systems to TRL8 and TRL9, ensuring AgroCycle will have an enduring impact by achieving sustainable use of AWCB both inside and outside the agricultural sector, leading to the realisation of a Circular Economy. AgroCycle addresses wastes from several agricultural sectors: wine, olive oil, horticulture, fruit, grassland, swine, dairy and poultry. The AgroCycle consortium is a large (25) multi-national group (including China) comprising the necessary and relevant multi-actors (i.e. researchers; companies in the technical, manufacturing, advisory, retail sectors (Large and SMEs); lead users; end users; and trade/producer associations) for achieving the project’s ambitions goals. Farming’s unique regional (rural) location means that AgroCycle will help reduce the EU’s Innovation Divide and address the Regional Smart Specialisation Strategies for each partner country: impact will be Regional with National and International dimensions. The presence of three partners from China ensures international synergies and a global impact.