In a TRANSITION to resilient agriculture in the Mediterranean, the main goals must be optimized productivity, long-term biological, economic, and social sustainability, provision of multiple ecosystem services, and minimal environmental degradation. Modern agroforestry and mixed farming systems are farming options with great added value as compared to intensive monoculture - both economically and ecologically – promoting resilience and providing multiple ecosystem services. Farmers require replicable results which assure income equality, and administrations require evidence and data to drive sustainable intensification. Furthermore, these systems are compatible with other enhanced farming options such as organic or regenerative agriculture. In order to “Redesign agro-livelihood systems to ensure resilience” (call topic), innovative strategies are required to promote improved overall integration of agricultural systems, with the primary objective of assuring farmer livelihoods. With this in mind, the goal of TRANSITION is to pave the way towards resilient agriculture in the Mediterranean, maximizing the net positive impact on the environment, while increasing resilience of agroecosystems, rural societies and return on assets to farmers. This is done by analyzing a large selection of the existing farming systems based on agroforestry and mixed farming using a participatory approach. TRANSITION will i) identify appropriate strategies and technologies for adoption to improve resilience of the Mediterranean agriculture sector, including unconventional water reuse and soil protection strategies ii) establish what are the environmental and socio-economic barriers to resilient agriculture implementation iii) quantify the system productivity and delivery of ecosystem services of existing systems and co-designed and replicable case studies and their effect on farmers’ livelihoods iv) empower the expansion of agroforestry and mixed farming systems as sustainable intensification options through practical innovation and knowledge exchange and v) provide robust information which is useful to administrations in terms of measurable impacts and possible transition scenarios which maximize ecological services delivery and system resilience of key Mediterranean cropping systems. On-the-ground research and innovation in TRANSITION is organized in a distributed manner in five different countries and regions. The study regions are Catalonia (Spain), Sétif (Algeria), Sicily (Italy), the Behia and Kafr Elsheihk Governates of Egypt, and Southwest France, for a total of three regions in the North Mediterranean and two in the South, representing different pedo-climatic areas, cultures, and agricultural practices. Regions comparisons include water reuse, olive and cereal agroforestry, and mixed farming with cows, but local conditions, important crops, and practices are inherently diverse, and this diversity must be respected and considered. In this sense, we have pre-identified 20 resilience-building strategies 29 traditional and innovative farming systems which will be considered. These include novel mixtures of crops trees, and animals, technologies such as biostimulants and biochar, water recovery, and genetic resources. Digital tools must be increasingly employed for agricultural management and territorial planning. On one hand, Earth observation methods (EO) will be used to identify which systems are historically most resilient to climatic and other disturbances and guarantee productivities and incomes, and the on-the-ground experiments are also contrasted with the same remote sensing tools. With this approach TRANSITION is able to consider a large variety of farming systems, detect those which should be promoted, and offer strategic territorial analysis. Secondly, a highly innovative digital knowledge-sharing platform and data-sharing tool is deployed internationally in order to promote development of sustainable farming systems.

Agroforestry (AF) is the practice of deliberately integrating woody vegetation (trees or shrubs) with crop and/or animal systems to benefit from the resulting ecological and economic interactions. Research activities developed by AFINET partners indicates that appropriate application of AF principles and practices is a key avenue to help the European Union to achieve more sustainable methods of food and fibre production, producing both profits for farmers and environmental benefits. However up to now exists a lack of AF knowledge among end-users that prevent the correct implementation of these practices. In this sense AFINET will act at EU level in order to take up research results into agricultural practice, improving knowledge exchange between scientists and practitioners on AF activities, with a special focus on silvoarable and silvopastoral systems design, management, and production and profitability. To achieve this objective AFINET consortium proposes an innovative methodology based on: (i) The creation of a EU reservoir of scientific and practical knowledge of AF with an end-user-friendly access (the “Knowledge Cloud”). (ii) The creation of a European Interregional network (composed of “Regional Agroforestry Innovation Networks” - RAINs) considering a multi-actor approach (including farmers, policy makers, advisory services, extension services, etc.), and articulated through the figure of the “Innovation Broker”. These RAINs groups will be interconnected in nine strategic regions of Europe from Spain, UK, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, Hungary, Poland, France and Finland, representing different climatic, geographical, social, and cultural conditions at European level. In addition, to create a greater user acceptance of the collected solutions and an intensive dissemination to end-users, AFINET will be linked to other networks, initiatives and policy instruments at regional, national and European level with a specific focus on the EIP-AGRI implementation.

"The Agrof-MM project in Agroforestry Education, Mediterranean & Mountains ereas, is aimed at farmers, future farmers, advisors and stakeholders in Agroforestry. This agricultural system has experienced a strong abandonment in the 20th century, to count today only a few million ha in Europe. Following the work of scientific research, development structures-agencies, and the experiments of some professionals, in recent years, agroforestry has met a true national and European recognition. Depending on the country, states or professional organizations and training actors reintroduce Agroforestry in the course of training and qualification in initial education (VET) and in adult training. Based on the results of scientific research, development structures and those of the ""farmer-researchers"", experimental courses were conducted in different countries, including FR, in the UK or in IT, on a small scale, as resources, trainers and available skills are scarce. It is on these four components: the results of scientific research, professional practice formalized training based on business situations, innovative teaching resources, the transfer from past AgroFE ToI project, the AgroF-MM project is based. In the partnership countries, the need for conversion and development is between 25 000 and 30 000 farms in the next 5 to7 years, which means training 25,000 to 30,000 farming managers (L4 to L6 by country) as well as the same number of workers and ‘’small farmers’’, L2-L3-L4 by country. But in order to achieve, to support these conversions, these profound changes in modes of practical production, we need counsellors-advisors, trainers, specialists and the level of human resources is low! The partners have identified training needs in the short term: These needs are on the one hand farmers and future farmers, adults and pupils - students, on the other hand, middle managers and teachers-counsellors-specialists. These requirements therefore relate to two levels of qualification L2-L3-L4 L5+/L6 and 3 types of learners (target groups): - Students (in VET) and adults, small farmers, future farmers and workers in farming on the one hand, mainly L2-L3, sometimes L4,- the farmers and future farmers (in larger farms) and middle management, mainly L3-L4-L5, sometimes L5,- the advisors-teachers-specialists, mainly level L5+L6,and the stakeholders of the oriention-pretraining tools and support systems, to attract learners, future farmers or to inform farmers and farming workers..In the short term, the project will address these 4 needs / three publics through a AgroF-MM training system established by the partners, partly based on the AgroFE Leonardo ToI project, the development of the EU AgForward RTD 7th research, the EURAF EU research association and its working groups, and the outcomes from the French RMT and Casdar programme. The project would be build on innovative teaching and training practices,( FR, GR BG), for instance on professional situations providing training and certification at the workplace (like SPS in France), access to recognized qualifications (NQF, EQF, ECVET, ECTS when possible), a process based on ‘’russian dolls’’, the certified and accredited inferior level giving access to the superior one, the certification at L4 giving access to L5 in the same domain.The training paths at the two planned levels have been developed with a common professional reference system, called the European Professional Referential in Agroforestry, EPRA, a common content, training framework for agroforestry called Core Content. In order to reduce the differences in knowledge and skills between the partners It has been necessary to develop a common professional vocabulary, the Theaurus, which did not exist, which required an important work with trainers- teacher-researchers, professionals, Thesaurus which represents an additional production of the project. A training framework adaptable to the specificities and training modalities of each of the partner countries has been designed and successfully implemented in six partner countries to train more than 150 operators and professionals in training 5j, more than 300 in training 1j and 70 trainers and advisors."