Agricultural policies like the EU CAP are widening the scope to contribute to the Paris climate agreement and the Sustainability Development Goals. From the Commission's legislative proposals (June 2018) it is expected that the European Union (EU) Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) will be redesigned in line with this. Consequences are among others a move of the CAP to farm specific measures and an improved link to environment, climate change and ecosystem services. It is proposed that Member States and regions develop their own CAP strategic plan with more attention to the regional implementation of the CAP. This wider scope and measures with a focus on individual farmers ask for a new generation of impact assessment tools. Current state-of-the-art agricultural models are not able to deliver individual farm and local effects as they are specified at higher levels of aggregation. Making use of improved possibilities opened up by progress in the ICT area, our project MIND STEP will improve exploitation of available agricultural and biophysical data and will include the individual decision making (IDM) unit in policy models. Based on a common data framework MIND STEP will develop IDM models, including agent-based models, focussing on different topics in an integrated manner in different regional case studies. The IDM models will be estimated and calibrated using agricultural statistics and big datasets, drawing on established econometric and evolving machine learning techniques and using both traditional models of optimising behaviour and theories from behavioural economics. MIND STEP will closely cooperate with a range of stakeholders to co-create and apply the MIND STEP model toolbox to selected regional, national and EU wide policy cases. MIND STEP cooperates with other consortia under the topic to share ideas and innovations. Finally, MIND STEP develops an Exploitation Strategy and Plan to guarantee the sustainability of the project results upon its completion.

The PLAID project (Peer-to-peer Learning: Accessing Innovation through Demonstration) will identify, compile and make publically accessible the topics, locations, best practices and innovative approaches to demonstration on commercial farms in the EU 28, Switzerland and Norway. PLAID will enable access to demonstration activities by creating a searchable georeferenced inventory and map covering all 30 countries; developing ‘virtual’ (on-line) demonstration approaches with commercial farmers; assessing governance, commissioning, financing, topic selection, access (particularly gender), mediation techniques and impact in 24 longitudinal case studies; and comparing the impact of different governance models and financing mechanisms on learning processes and accessibility. PLAID will produce recommendations for governance and best practice in both real and virtual demonstration settings, using these to develop indicators and decision support tools for farmers, advisors, commercial companies, charities, educators, policy makers and researchers. PLAID is a multi-actor consortium, using a multi-stakeholder approach, where farmers, industry stakeholders and academics work together as to design, test and validate outputs. PLAID has been designed to achieve high impact, through generation of a substantial set of knowledge exchange activities and project outputs, which will be hosted long-term on PLAID stakeholder web-sites, You Tube and the EIP Agri Service Point. PLAID will initiate a community of practice, which together with the above activities and outputs will provide a solid foundation for RUR-12-2017: “Networking European farms to boost thematic knowledge exchanges and close the innovation gap” and provide substantive input to the EIP Agri database.

As part of the European Green Deal, the EU must achieve climate neutrality by 2050. The land use sector has a key role to play, which is recognized in the “Fit for 55 package”, where a climate neutrality target for the Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use (AFOLU) is set for 2035. To enable fundamental transformations in the land use sector necessary to achieve the Green Deal, LAMASUS proposes a step change in land use sector governance from policy formulation to implementation to monitoring. LAMASUS builds on i) decades of experience in direct policy support, ii) unique modeling tools, such as GLOBIOM, the only model that integrates agricultural and land use sectors, and CAPRI, MAGNET and CLUE, which underlie JRC’s land use policy assessments, and iii) novel approaches mobilizing machine learning and citizen science. The project is driven by four key elements: EVIDENCE – dynamic monitoring of land use, management and related policies for evaluation and model calibration; UNDERSTANDING – state-of-the-art econometric and biophysical models to assess the role of past policies on changes in land use and management, and their economic and environmental impacts; TOOLS – a highly-integrated policy modeling framework with full sectorial coverage from agriculture and forestry to the whole economy, accounting for carbon, biodiversity and all relevant sustainability dimensions, at multiple scales (land use actors, country, EU level, global); GUIDANCE – a multi-level stakeholder dialogue for co-design of agriculture, forestry and climate policies by the EC, national and local governments and citizens, made accessible to stakeholders across multiple spatial scales through the novel web-based LAMASUS Portal. In this way, LAMUSUS will create a new level of societal engagement in which local actors contribute to the design of effective and efficient EU policies for climate neutrality and will serve as an exemplar for other policy processes within the European Green Deal.

AgriLink aims to stimulate sustainability transitions in European agriculture through better understanding the roles played by farm advice in farmer decision-making. To this end, AgriLink will analyse and improve the role of farmer advice in 8 innovation areas that combine challenges identified in the “Strategic Approach to EU Agricultural Research & Innovation”. AgriLink builds on the premise that the full range of advice-providing organisations need to be included in the assessment of service provision and innovation adoption. The methodology combines theoretical insights with cutting edge research methods within a multi-actor, transdisciplinary approach. It draws on ‘micro-AKIS’ (individuals and organisations from whom farmers seek services and exchange knowledge with) analysis in 26 focus regions, sociotechnical scenario development and ‘living laboratories’ where farmers, advisors and researchers work together. Research in focus regions will provide insight in farmers’ micro-AKIS, advisory suppliers’ business models, and regional farm advisory systems. This will feed an assessment of the efficacy of governance of farm-advice-research interactions across Europe. Newly developed advisory methods and new forms of research-practice interaction will be validated and further developed in Living Laboratories. A socio-technical scenario method will be used to explore, jointly with stakeholders, transition pathways towards more sustainable agriculture. Crucially, AgriLink builds on insights and experiences from both research and practice. The consortium consists of researchers from different disciplines (institutional economics, innovation studies, AKIS studies, sociology of networks), as well as of advisors (from public, private and farmer-based organisations) from across the EU. Actors from advisory services will be active in the validation and dissemination of results, to ensure that all project findings are both scientifically sound and practically useful.

EmpowerUs will enable coastal communities to act for change and transition towards sustainable, inclusive and resilient coastal developments. We assume that true empowerment implies R&I should catalyze, facilitate and support coastal communities in the acquisition of power through a variety of tools, methods and coproduction with the inclusion of all actors, at local, regional, national and European levels. EmpowerUs will develop an adaptive transformation mechanism via on a network of six Transition Coastal Labs (TCLs) across all EU coastal regions. Recognising that no one solution will address the myriad of challenges coastal communities face, the EmpowerUs transformation mechanism will be adaptive and based on a multi-actor transdisciplinary approach. The project will co-create, pilot and evaluate Tailored Empowerment Programmes that include a portfolio of social innovation and Nature-Based Solutions. By facilitating capacity building through improved understanding of challenges, barriers and enablers of change and increasing Ocean Literacy through nature connectedness and cultural heritage, EmpowerUs will support social innovation and self-sustaining communities. The EmpowerCoast digital twin/digital GIS platform will ensure the EmpowerUs mechanism is available to all coastal communities to uptake and use to support sustainable action. EmpowerUs consortium is balanced, complementary and transdisciplinary with key expertise in socio- economic technical, and ecological issues and the science-policy needed to achieve the projects aims and objectives. EmpowerUs will provide innovative platforms to empower citizens to take transformative actions in line with EU policies to meet global challenges including biodiversity degradation and climate change at a local scale, supporting just, inclusive and sustainable coastal development.