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Call key data
Developing an EU advisory network on organic agriculture
Funding Program
Horizon Europe - Cluster 6 - Destination 7: Innovative Governance, Environmental Oberservations and Digital Solutions in Support of the Green Deal
Call number
HORIZON-CL6-2023-GOVERNANCE-01-20
deadlines
Opening
22.12.2022
Deadline
23.03.2023 17:00
Funding rate
100%
Call budget
€ 5,000,000.00
Estimated EU contribution per project
€ 5,000,000.00
Link to the call
Link to the submission
Call content
short description
This topic focuses on the important role that advisors can play in relation to boosting organic farming towards reaching the target of at least 25% of the EU's agricultural land under organic farming by 2030. In particular, advisors can play a key role in encouraging conversion to organic farming and in facilitating this process to farmers, and overall in tackling the challenges of organic farming.
Call objectives
Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS), in which advisors play a central role, are key drivers to speed up innovation and the uptake of research results by farmers. Transformative changes such as the ones called for by the farm to fork strategy, are dynamic and knowledge-intensive processes that require appropriate governance of AKIS actors. Advisors play a key role in steering and influencing farmers’ decisions. A novelty in the post-2020 CAP plans is that advisors must be integrated within the Member States’ AKIS, and that the scope of their actions has become much broader. Advisors must be able to cover the economic, environmental and social domains, as well as being up-to-date on scientific and innovation developments. They should be able to translate this knowledge into concrete opportunities for the end users, and adapt those to specific local circumstances.
In this context, advisors are in a good position to provide hands-on training to organic farmers, to inspire new and incoming farmers or farms at the cross-roads of intergenerational renewal, to connect with education and ensure broad communication, to support peer-to-peer consulting, and to develop on-farm demonstrations.
Proposals should set up an EU advisory network dedicated to organic farming, covering both organic plant production systems and organic animal husbandry. The network should involve participants from at least 20 EU Member States, including countries in which the organic sector is more developed and less developed. In this context, proposals should:
- Connect farm advisors across the EU, with a view to sharing experiences on how to best tackle the main issues of the sector.
- Undertake knowledge, best practice and innovation exchange activities that support Member States in making the best use of the possibilities offered by the new CAP to support their national organic sector.
- Fill gaps on emerging advisory topics beyond the classical sectorial advice, in particular in view of the new obligation for Member States to integrate advisors within their AKIS.
- Serve as a platform to bring stakeholders together to discuss challenges and solutions to practical organic farming problems, such as bottlenecks, lock-ins, power imbalances, normative aspects, lack of consumer buy-in or trust, inequalities between Member States, etc.;
- Provide overall support related to knowledge creation, organisation and sharing. This could include peer-to-peer counselling, master classes, (digital) advice modules, communication and education materials, etc.
- Promote the sharing of effective and novel approaches that are sustainable in terms of economic, environmental and social aspects.
- Create added value by ensuring stronger links between research, education, advisors and farming practice and encouraging the wider use of available knowledge across the EU.
- Spread ready-to-use innovative solutions to practitioners and ensuring communication to the scientific community of research needs from practice.
- Taking strong account of cost-benefit elements, collect and document good examples of connecting farmers, intermediates and consumers in Member States to be able to take into account financial aspects and local conditions. Select the best practices, and extract lessons about the key success factors, possible quick wins and make them available for (local) exploitation.
- Promote the integration of the advisors of the EU advisory network on organic farming into their Member State’s AKIS.
- Explore if the activities of the EU advisory network on organic farming can be up scaled at the level of a number of Member States under a cooperative format. Seek if common tools can be created to incentivise the implementation of the learnings from this project.
- Organise training activities for new advisors to be integrated in the network during the course of the project.
- In the EU advisory network, use local AKIS connections which can more accurately interpret the national/regional contexts to help develop the best solutions for that Member State or region. Use the support of the Member States’ knowledge and innovation experts of the SCAR-AKIS Strategic Working Group and of the SCAR Agroecology Strategic Working Group to discuss project strategy and progress in the various stages of the project.
Outcomes should be spread beyond the organic farming communities and reach also farmers involved in conventional, carbon, low-input, circular agriculture or agroecology. Proposals must implement the multi-actor approach, with a majority of partners being organic farming advisors with solid field experience. Proposals should capitalise and build on the outputs of relevant EIP-AGRI Operational Groups and EIP-AGRI networking activities, as well as those of the Horizon 2020 Thematic Networks related to organic farming. Proposals should dedicate a task, appropriate resources and a plan on how they will ensure synergy with and take into consideration the results of other initiatives under Horizon Europe, including the projects selected under the topics HORIZON-CL6-2021-FARM2FORK-01-01: ‘Reaching the farm to fork target: R&I scenarios for boosting organic farming and organic aquaculture in Europe’, and HORIZON-CL6-2021-BIODIV-01-14: ‘Fostering organic crop breeding’ in the Horizon Europe Work Programme 2021-2022. Proposals should also dedicate appropriate resources to ensure synergies with the activities carried out by projects selected under the following topics in this work programme: HORIZON-CL6-2024-FARM2FORK-02-1-two-stage: ‘Increasing the availability and use of non-contentious inputs in organic farming’, and HORIZON-CL6-2023-FARM2FORK: ‘Improving yields in organic cropping systems’, HORIZON-CL6-2023-CLIMATE-01-5: ‘Pilot network of climate-positive organic farms’, as well as coherence and synergies with the activities of the future partnership ‘Accelerating farming systems transition: agroecology living labs and research infrastructures’. Proposals should provide all outcomes and materials to the European Innovation Partnership 'Agricultural Productivity and Sustainability' (EIP-AGRI), including in the common 'practice abstract' format for EU wide dissemination, as well as to national/regional/local AKIS channels and to the EU-wide interactive knowledge reservoir (HORIZON-CL6-2021-GOVERNANCE-01-24) in the requested formats.
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Expected effects and impacts
A successful proposal will support the objectives of the European Green Deal, and notably its farm to fork and biodiversity strategies, and the sustainable carbon cycle communication, to transition to fair, healthy, climate and environmentally-friendly food systems from primary production to consumption, in particular the objective to promote organic farming in Europe. Activities will support the implementation of the action plan on the development of organic production and of the common agricultural policy (CAP).
The successful proposal will focus on exchanges between farm advisors across the EU in order to increase the speed of knowledge creation and sharing, capacity building, demonstration of innovative solutions in organic farming, as well as helping to bring them into practice in order to accelerate adoption of these solutions.
Expected results
- Accelerated progress towards achieving the policy objectives linked to the farm to fork strategy’s target on organic farming, and in particular those identified under the Action Plan on the Development of Organic Production, as well as the new CAP;
- Supported implementation in Member States of the CAP’s cross-cutting objective of modernising the sector by fostering and sharing of knowledge, innovation and digitalisation in agriculture and rural areas, and encouraging their uptake;
- Enhanced interactions among advisors and other relevant actors in the EU and Associated Countries conducive to a strengthened research and innovation ecosystem for organic farming;
- Increased provision of supporting services and materials that facilitate the conversion to and upscaling of organic farming;
- Accelerated introduction, spread and implementation in practice of innovative solutions related to organic farming leading to improved production methods of organic farms.
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Eligibility Criteria
Regions / countries for funding
Moldova (Moldova), Albania (Shqipëria), Armenia (Հայաստան), Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosna i Hercegovina / Босна и Херцеговина), Faeroes (Føroyar / Færøerne), Georgia (საქართველო), Iceland (Ísland), Israel (ישראל / إِسْرَائِيل), Kosovo (Kosova/Kosovë / Косово), Montenegro (Црна Гора), Morocco (المغرب), North Macedonia (Северна Македонија), Norway (Norge), Serbia (Srbija/Сpбија), Tunisia (تونس /Tūnis), Türkiye, Ukraine (Україна), United Kingdom
eligible entities
EU Body, Education and training institution, International organization, Natural Person, Non-Profit Organisation (NPO) / Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Other, Private institution, incl. private company (private for profit), Public Body (national, regional and local; incl. EGTCs), Research Institution incl. University, Small and medium-sized enterprise (SME)
Mandatory partnership
No
Project Partnership
To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the following countries:
- the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions
- the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States
- third countries associated to Horizon Europe - see list of particpating countries
Applications may be submitted by one or more legal entities, which may be established in a Member State, Associated Country or, in exceptional cases and if provided for in the specific call conditions, in another third country.
Any legal entity, regardless of its place of establishment, including legal entities from non-associated third countries or international organisations (including international European research organisations) is eligible to participate (whether it is eligible for funding or not), provided that the conditions laid down in the Horizon Europe Regulation have been met, along with any other conditions laid down in the specific call topic.
A ‘legal entity’ means any natural or legal person created and recognised as such under national law, EU law or international law, which has legal personality and which may, acting in its own name, exercise rights and be subject to obligations, or an entity without legal personality.
Specific cases:
- Affiliated entities — Affiliated entities (i.e. entities with a legal or capital link to a beneficiary which participate in the action with similar rights and obligations to the beneficiaries, but which do not sign the grant agreement and therefore do not become beneficiaries themselves) are allowed, if they are eligible for participation and funding.
- Associated partners — Associated partners (i.e. entities which participate in the action without signing the grant agreement, and without the right to charge costs or claim contributions) are allowed, subject to any conditions regarding associated partners set out in the specific call conditions.
- Entities without legal personality — Entities which do not have legal personality under their national law may exceptionally participate, provided that their representatives have the capacity to undertake legal obligations on their behalf, and offer guarantees to protect the EU’s financial interests equivalent to those offered by legal persons.
- EU bodies — Legal entities created under EU law including decentralised agencies may be part of the consortium, unless provided for otherwise in their basic act.
- Joint Research Centre (‘JRC’)— Where provided for in the specific call conditions, applicants may include in their proposals the possible contribution of the JRC but the JRC will not participate in the preparation and submission of the proposal. Applicants will indicate the contribution that the JRC could bring to the project based on the scope of the topic text. After the evaluation process, the JRC and the consortium selected for funding may come to an agreement on the specific terms of the participation of the JRC. If an agreement is found, the JRC may accede to the grant agreement as beneficiary requesting zero funding or participate as an associated partner, and would accede to the consortium as a member.
- Associations and interest groupings — Entities composed of members (e.g. European research infrastructure consortia (ERICs)) may participate as ‘sole beneficiaries’ or ‘beneficiaries without legal personality’. However, if the action is in practice implemented by the individual members, those members should also participate (either as beneficiaries or as affiliated entities, otherwise their costs will NOT be eligible.
other eligibility criteria
Proposals must apply the multi-actor approach. See definition of the multi-actor approach on pages 21-23 of the work programme.
Additional information
Topics
Relevance for EU Macro-Region
EUSAIR - EU Strategy for the Adriatic and Ionian Region, EUSALP - EU Strategy for the Alpine Space, EUSBSR - EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region, EUSDR - EU Strategy for the Danube Region
UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs)
Additional Information
All proposals must be submitted electronically via the Funders & Tenders Portal electronic submission system (accessible via the topic page in the Search Funding & Tenders section). Paper submissions are NOT possible.
Proposals must be complete and contain all parts and mandatory annexes and supporting documents, e.g. plan for the exploitation and dissemination of the results including communication activities, etc.
The application form will have two parts:
- Part A (to be filled in directly online) contains administrative information about the applicant organisations (future coordinator and beneficiaries and affiliated entities), the summarised budget for the proposal and call-specific questions;
- Part B (to be downloaded from the Portal submission system, completed and then assembled and re-uploaded as a PDF in the system) contains the technical description of the project.
Annexes and supporting documents will be directly available in the submission system and must be uploaded as PDF files (or other formats allowed by the system).
The limit for a full application (Part B) is 33 pages.
Eligible costs will take the form of a lump sum.
Call documents
HE-Work Programme 2023-2024, Cluster 6, Destination 7HE-Work Programme 2023-2024, Cluster 6, Destination 7(1046kB)
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