European Union (EU) water resources are increasingly coming under pressure from climate change and inefficient management, with the agri-food sector exerting a 40-60% of water use. Despite recognising the need for resource optimisation, integrating sustainable innovative solutions into farming practices remain vague. AQUAGRI-KNOW, led by a multi-actor consortium of 12 partners from 5 EU countries, aims to tackle efficient water management on-farm by broadening EIP-AGRI OGs outcomes. AQUAGRI-KNOW’s endeavour has been thoughtfully chosen to address water scarcity and water quality concerns focusing on four strategies ensuring a circular water value chain (S1. Water Use, S2. Water Smart Crops, S3. Water-Soil Interface, and S4. Water Reuse). AQUAGRI-KNOW systematically adapts, enhances and builds-up practical knowledge through a five-step methodology: (1) Knowledge collection & homogenisation to gather EIP-AGRI OGs outcomes and beyond; (2) Contextualisation & alignment to integrate the needs, barriers, challenges, and opportunities of end-users; (3) Translation & adaptation to create a clearinghouse of tailored knowledge for farmers and practitioners; (4) Sharing & exchange to facilitate knowledge flow; and (5) Interconnection & widening to boost impact across borders and increase the lifespan of generated knowledge. AQUAGRI-KNOW impact is transformative, by modernising the agri-food sectorthrough the improvement of practitioners' access to easy-to-understand and practice-oriented knowledge. AQUAGRI-KNOW empowers farmers to make informed decisions, foster cross-border collaboration, and develop a comprehensive and scalable framework applicable to similarly impacted regions globally. Furthermore, an Ambassador Program will be placed, transferring knowledge to enable the adoption of innovative solutions in new sites, expanding AQUAGRI-KNOW’s impact. Through these efforts, AQUAGRI-KNOW envisions a collaborative, informed, sustainable future for EU agriculture.

The aim of the project is to give effective tools to young women living in rural areas to take up their lives thanks to specific entrepreneurial training in sustainable development, to foster their employability, socio-educational and personal development. Through the promotion of green thinking, raising awareness of sustainability, promoting the development in rural and/or isolated areas, exchanging good practices, providing expertise and knowledge for women from rural areas, the project will considerably promote the entrepreneurship education and activities amongst young women. As stated in the European Green Deal for the European Union (2019), the future development of the EU must be green and sustainable, or it shouldn’t be at all. Offering young people and particularly young women, tools, to improve their potential in the labour market and, at the same time, find sustainable solutions to support the local development of their rural communities, is a good strategy to have a “greener” Europe. This is also in line with the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals and with what is called for in the UNESCO’s Global Action Programme (GAP) on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Addressing sustainability, development of rural areas and capacity building/training opportunities for young people is the key to make sure that younger generations, even in disadvantaged conditions, can be the real change-makers.In fact, YOU_WEEN! focuses on young women as they suffer from a particularly challenging set of educational barriers, due to cultural, political, social reasons that leave them out of education or job market: nearly 14% of world’s young women are unemployed (UNESCO, 2016) and are considered globally as a vulnerable youth category, having limited knowledge of their civic and political rights, including the capacity to express their political and social views (UN Interpeace).On the other hand, it has been shown by numerous studies and field researches that working with young women becomes particularly effective thanks to the social role played by women since when they have the opportunity and the skills to do it, women take the lead of the social change (UN Womenwatch Organization).YOU_WEEN! objectives are:- train the trainers about instruments for rural development, (social) entrepreneurship, women empowerment, and sustainable ideas- start rural development local grass-roots initiatives lead by young women- Inspire rural communities for agro-economic and social change- Share good practices of rural development and women empowerment in Consortium countries- develop 3 I.O.:1- Set of educational videos2- Virtual Interactive Network and platform3- Exploitation roadmap and guidelines for policy influence- Strengthen Consortium partnership by developing common events and activitiesTherefore, at the end of the project, we’ll have:- 280 young women involved, that will have, as results:- empowered entrepreneurial and managerial skills;- discovered insights and knowledge about different rural life, hidden opportunities and organizational structures (in terms of business and entrepreneurship);- improved communication, interpersonal and foreign language skills;- refined and increased teamwork capacity, social skills, cultural awareness, acceptance of cultural diversity, increased tolerance to others and gender equality;- raised awareness and knowledge about environmental issues and good practices as well as sustainable solutions;- better ICT competences thanks to the use of the platform and the creation of innovative content;- increased self-confidence and self-worthiness;At the end of the project the 56+ Youth workers will have:- improved competences in non-formal training methodologies;- improved communication, interpersonal and foreign language skills;- improved ICT competences;- experience in leading youth groups in sustainable grass-roots projects.The intellectual outputs are all addressed to foster the long-term impact, as they will remain available for further training and bottom-up projects, as well as the Virtual Network that should become a reference for young women all over Europe.Moreover, each community will have trained youth workers that will continue applying the acquired competences with other young women willing to improve their entrepreneurial potential in the framework of sustainable development. At the same time, we hope and seek out that the young women that had participated to the project will continue their path in promoting sustainable development, as well as involving their peers and their communities. The effectiveness of the bottom-up approach is a fundamental pillar for guaranteeing the project sustainability over time, while the tools such as the educational videos will remain at disposal and eventually updated by the youth workers.

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.

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.

Climate Farm Demo is a unique pan-European network of Pilot Demo Farmers (PDFs) covering 28 countries and all pedo-climatic areas. Its overall aim it to accelerate the adoption of Climate Smart Farming (CSF) practices and solutions by farmers and all actors of the Climate Smart Agriculture Knowledge & Innovation Systems with a view of adapting agricultural production systems to climate change and of achieving a carbon neutral agricultural sector by 2050, thereby meeting the targets of the EU Climate strategy. To reach this objective, the project adopts a Multi-Actor approach by connecting 1500 Pilot Demo Farmers and their Climate Farm Advisors (CFAs) at European and national levels to increase knowledge exchange & cross-fertilisation in their respective AKIS. The CFA’s will support the PDF’s in implementing Adaptation and Mitigation Measures suggested by contextualised guidelines and will assess & monitor their environmental performance thanks to harmonized methodologies & tools. Technical and social innovations covering a broad range of thematic areas will be demonstrated to the wider farming community across six annual demo-campaigns (4500 demo-events) supporting interactive and peer to peer learning. New and innovative CSF solutions will be co-created in 10 Living Labs spread across Europe and lessons learned from multi-actor innovation will be shared and scaled. A set of public and private rewarding mechanisms will be identified, proposed and demonstrated to the AKIS actors, thus incentivising the uptake of CSF solutions while ensuring sustainable business models. Strategic and operational cooperation will be organised with projects, flagship initiatives and policy-makers at European and national levels in order to share knowledge, organize coordinated actions, and produce policy briefs. Finally, to accelerate the wide spreading and uptake of results, an ambitious dissemination, exploitation and communication strategy will be deployed at EU and national levels