A global difficulty of attracting youth into farming, and the growing pressure on institutions to respond to the demand for efficient knowledge-transfer to youth in the digital age, are two key challenges within the contemporary socio-economic research. The YOUNG FARMERS project addresses these challenges by exploring the important but poorly explored question of how the global needs of youth in farming can benefit from digital communication technologies. There is already increasing use of digital communication tools by institutions to support generational renewal in farms such as establishing online youth forums, supporting digital farming platforms, using social media to disseminate information, and mobilize youth. However, these tools are still relatively new, thus it remains unclear as to how exactly they may contribute to generational renewal. The YOUNG FARMERS project aims to explore this digital communication transformation to develop a new thinking that guides generational renewal policies with a cross-national study in the USA and in Germany. At the center of the digital communication concept is the “networked individualism” model, which has been developed by digital sociology field to understand behavior patterns. Project conduct a study on the “networked” nature of youths’ economic behavior with focus on youth engagement into farming as a “career option”. The project is innovative, as it provides new perspectives to structure public debates in the area of rural youth, agricultural policies, and digital government. This project contributes (1) to the rise in new knowledge-transfer initiatives (e.g. EU young farmers’ networks, Erasmus+ apprenticeships in agriculture) that intend to offer new communication approaches to promote European young farming talents, and (2) to support the development of the human capital dimension of the Common Agricultural Policy post-2020, which has identified generational renewal as one of its nine goals.

The Asian grasslands that stretch from the Eastern shores of the Caspian Sea to Manchuria in China are the largest continuous grassland biome worldwide and play a vital role in global carbon sequestration and in sustaining biodiversity. In recent decades, the integrity of the Asian grasslands became threatened by climate change and increasing land-use intensity, which in turn jeopardize the livelihoods of millions of residents that rely on the grassland resources for feeding their animals. To date, however, the spatial and temporal patterns of the changes in grassland resources across the region have not been systematically assessed. Moreover, it remains elusive how changing grazing intensity, climate variations, and institutional transformations have affected the grassland dynamics. This project aims to fill this gap by mapping the spatial patterns of vegetation changes across the Asian grassland biome for the past three and a half decades, and by quantifying the drivers of these changes. The dynamics of grassland greenness, as a proxy of plant growth, will be assessed using vegetation indices derived from remote sensing data. The changes in grassland greenness will then be statistically associated with climate data, subnational livestock statistics, and other control variables using spatial econometric panel analysis at fine spatial grain and annual temporal resolution. Combined, these analyses will shed light on the importance of climate variations and land-use intensity across institutional boundaries. Such insights are pertinent for deriving management options and policy solutions that simultaneously reduce grassland degradation and secure rural livelihoods in Asia. Besides the scientific goals, this action will provide a platform for the applicant and the host to share and transfer their knowledge and experiences in interdisciplinary research in human-environmental systems.

The project coordinator is among Romania’s most competitive agricultural universities, yet at international level and in the agricultural economics discipline still struggles to become fully competitive. Three extremely innovative and well-known Western institutions of agricultural economics research have agreed to deliver the necessary know-how to improve this situation. Mainly four important bricks have been designed in response to the call text of “Significantly strengthening a defined field of research in a particular knowledge institution by creating a link between this institution and internationally-leading research institutions”: 1. Institutional support is provided to implement internal review processes and to strengthen the motivation of the workforce 2. Quarterly training sessions on scientometrics, supply and demand analysis and modelling is going to support the scientific staff of the faculty to become more proficient in applying quantitative methods. 3. Summer schools will be held on game theory, full-cost-calculation and policy analysis in which students of the faculty, but also of other Romanian universities may train their handling of economic issues. 4. Three-months exchanges in both directions will stabilize the exchange of methods and theories and will provide opportunities for joint research and publication. Two groups will support the process: An International Advisory Board will evaluate the quality of the process from a scientific viewpoint after one year and at the end of the project. The Stakeholder Board has the objective of formulating local needs and to link them with the process of scientific development in the faculty. Intensive communication activities additionally contribute to inform the local and scientific public about the twinning project.

Geospatial Science (GISc) integrates three traditional geosciences: Geodesy as the science of precise spatial data acquisition; Geography as the science of studying human and physical aspects; Cartography as the science of making maps. The integration of these sciences is based on the rapidly evolving computer science. The methods of GISc are widely applied in other sciences, essential in decision making for sustainable development.There are several challenges in UZ, where GISc may efficiently support solutions, for such issues as climate change, land degradation, heavy use of agrochemicals, diversion of huge amounts of irrigation water from the two main rivers of the region, water scarcity, the chronic lack of water treatment, e.g. Aral Sea, or the growing threat to air quality. UZ society will benefit from innovations to enhance quality, performance and interactivity of public services, to reduce costs and resource consumption and to improve contact between citizens and government.The wider aim of the project was to support Uzbekistan in sustainable development by GISc. The objectives envisaged with the project was to establish a missing puzzle from the Uzbek educational system after the MSc level has been completed and before the DSc is targeted. The project established an accredited Doctoral School in the field of GISc, developed its programme, defined the requirements, advanced supporting teaching and learning materials in English or Uzbek languages, all developed in accordance with international standards and in accordance with the Uzbek education system.As a support for the new Doctoral programme, a network of activities is conducted to improve the educational and research capacity of the Uzbek society. Among these activities, an international network of the 5 leading Uzbek universities is established. Also, their education capacity is developed by creating a Knowledge Centre at each Uzbek universities containing an e-learning platform with a jointly developed Knowledge Pool. The Knowledge Pool is a database of teaching and research materials, supporting research activity of future PhD students. Furthermore, a Joint Research Centre has been developed, which is equally accessible by all Uzbek universities for improving the research capacity of related PhD programmes. For potential Uzbek PhD students, a scholarship has been offered for 2-month visiting research at an EU university, which has proved to be efficient in adopting the researcher's approach and developing research skills, in general, by experiencing international standards. Also, annual GI conferences have been organized (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021) to provide a platform for presenting research results, which is planned to be continued after the project period as well.