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).

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.

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.

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.

SKIN is an ambitious initiative of 20 partners in 14 countries in the area of Short Food Supply Chains (SFSCs). It intends to systematise and bring knowledge to practitioners, promote collaboration within a demand-driven innovation logic and provide inputs to policymaking through links to the EIP-AGRI. SKIN will build and animate a community of about 500 stakeholders, with the strategic objective of setting up, at the conclusion of the project, a European association permanently working for the improvement of SFSCs efficiency and for the benefit of stakeholders and growth in the sector. The community will be built and animated around the identification of good practices in short supply chains across Europe. Partners will scout, analyse and classify a significant number of cases in different countries. “Best practices” (at least 100) will be systematised, processed into highly usable formats (including video and page-flows) and made accessible to stakeholders via the web (following the EIP AGRI formats) and through the set-up of regional nodes, to allow a deeper penetration of existing knowledge into practice. The work on good practices will also allow identifying key issues (hindrances or opportunities) around SFSCs. Such issues will be the main themes of 6 “innovation challenges workshops” the purpose of which is to stimulate stakeholders to propose new ideas for innovation based research or innovation uptake. These will be supported in a coaching phase where consortium partners deliver guidance to stakeholders for the full development of those innovative ideas. SKIN puts significant efforts in dissemination, to reach as many stakeholders as possible, and exploitation, to plan post projects developments in the form of a permanent association that would give continuity to the activities launched with the project (community expansion, circulation of good practices, promotion of research based innovation and linkages with the EIP and policy making instances).