CLEVERFOOD will facilitate a society-wide mobilisation of European citizens, including children and youth, farmers, entrepreneurs, investors, researchers, educators, knowledge brokers and policy makers to transform the European food system in alignment with the EU Food 2030 Policy Framework, Farm to Fork Strategy and Fit for 55 Package. By providing targeted support for ongoing and emerging projects, partnerships and networks, implementing a pan-European Food 2030 multi-actor and public engagement mechanism and operationalizing an interlinked multi-level structure of connected Policy Labs and Living Labs, CLEVERFOOD will pave the way for a more regenerative, resilient and plant-based food system. Models for transformative multi-level food system governance and strategies for advancing food policies and legislation will be developed in the Policy Labs by launching a peer-learning program, organising inclusive multi-stakeholder dialogues and bringing together policymakers from all governance levels. Social and technological innovations to support sustainable food system transition will be accelerated in the Living Labs by co-creating strategies for removing lock-ins and building sustainable food value chains, mobilizing impact investors, promoting uptake of new technologies and measuring food system transition progress. Food system science competences of children and youth will be boosted by supporting food system science education activities in the Policy Labs and Living Labs and establishing a network to collaborate on transforming higher education teaching. Public engagement, citizen empowerment and mass mobilization will be maximised by supporting multi-actor, public engagement and citizen science activities in the Policy Labs and Living Labs, unlocking the power of influencers, deploying an interactive food systems exhibition, and designating and supporting permanent competence centres across Europe to ensure society-wide commitment to transform the food system.

modernAKIS aims to improve AKIS actors’ capacities to leverage individual, organizational and systemic resources needed for the transformation towards more coherent, effective and efficient AKIS systems and the transition to a more sustainable management and use of natural resources in farming and forestry. To this end it will build and foster a European network of at least 1.000 key AKIS actors, including AKIS coordination bodies, from all EU MS, who will act as linchpins in the transformation of the AKIS systems towards a more effective governance and the modernization of the European agri-food sector. The project will also build the capacities of these key AKIS actors towards systems understanding and engagement, enabling them to enact long-term system changes that will improve the AKIS. In addition, it will set up at least 1 Community of Practice in each Member State, enabling thus participants to act as vectors of change in their communities. In addition, modernAKIS will provide a comprehensive digital catalogue with new know-how, and at least 80 tools and methods supporting key AKIS actors to improve the knowledge flows and develop a well-functioning AKIS in line with relevant policy objectives, e.g the Green Deal, Farm2Fork, SDGs.

The agricultural sector is known for its demanding and hazardous working environments, leading to high rates of accidents and health issues among workers. Furthermore, drudgery due to physical work and repetitive tasks diminishes the attractiveness of the sector for youth. Emerging challenges such as digitalisation, technological intensification, structural change, environmental targets, and new risks due to climate change, coupled with global economic implications demand more and more from farmers and farm workers, exacerbate the need for timely information, and have new implications for occupational safety and health (OSH). AGRO-WELL follows a highly interdisciplinary approach to enhance knowledge for technological transitions towards an environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable agricultural sector. It brings together leading scientists from a multitude of OSH-related disciplines, various regions across Europe, key technology providers and farmer representatives. The project will assess farmer needs and explore ways to increase awareness with respect to smart farming. AGRO-WELL builds on five technologies to leverage the potential of robotics, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence to enhance working conditions and farm safety, enable faster and better-informed farm management decisions, and reduce the environmental impact of four different farming systems. Potential effects of the technologies will be multidimensionally assessed. To support market uptake, AGRO-WELL will design and explore the viability of business models based on novel technologies that are predominantly focused on improving OSH. To support other promising technologies, AGRO-WELL will incorporate an open technology competition enabled by cascade funding. All project results will be synthesized in effective dissemination strategies and meaningful policy recommendations to foster promising technological solutions and sustainable business models.

Electronic data generation, analytics and communication technologies potentially enable more accurate, faster and better decision-making on farms, with huge potential to improve agricultural sustainability. There is a major focus on digitisation by EU and national/regional policy-makers to ensure that digital innovation in agriculture keeps pace with other sectors and the benefits of digitisation are available to the wider farming community. However, there is a danger that digitisation and future innovations will be hampered unless the rural advisory community is mobilised to take ownership of digital tools and to advocate at the user interface. This CSA will engage, enable and empower the independent farm advisor community, through sharing of tools, expertise and motivations. FAIRshare has two main programmes. Firstly, WPs 1, 2 and 3 will gather an evidence base of the digital tools and services used internationally, leveraging the social networks of partner institutions that span EU and non-EU countries. The inventory of tools will be accessible to end-users on an intuitively navigable online interface that has been co-designed using a multi-actor approach. Accompanying the tools in the online inventory will be information, for instance short ‘good practice’ vignettes, on how the tools may be used/adapted for use. Secondly, WPs 4, 5 and 6 will generate and resource a participatory ‘living laboratory’, empowering advisor peers from across the EU to interact with the online inventory and, in a series of workshops, to exchange, co-adapt, co-design and apply digital tools. The FAIRshare 'living lab’ will enable advisors to address challenges to embedding digital tools in different advisory and farming contexts across the EU. Special focus will be on co-designing powerful communication and engagement approaches for advisors to advocate and inspire their peers and farmer clients, driving a social movement for the wider and better use of digital tools.

WelFarmers will set up eight national innovation networks and four Europe-wide networks of pig farmers, advisors, veterinarians and researchers to address the challenges of the upcoming change in the European pig welfare legislation. WelFarmers will address four main topics: cage ban; keeping pigs with uncovered tails; avoiding pain during castration and space and flooring. The most urgent innovation needs and challenges will be identified in a bottom up way and the network will collect and evaluate good practices that meet these needs. WelFarmers will also strive to collaborate with existing and new EIP-AGRI operational groups (OGs) and EU research projects focused on pig welfare and to enhance their impact. The selected best practices will be disseminated through a series of communication and dissemination activities to reach most pig farmers in the eight participating countries and in Europe. EIP abstracts, thematic reports videos, brochures, e-news, national workshops, transnational cross-fertilisation events and a multilingual website are some of the dissemination methods planned to communicate and disseminate the best practices.