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Call key data
Developing EU advisory networks on the optimal fertiliser use
Call number
HORIZON-CL6-2023-GOVERNANCE-01-22
deadlines
Opening
22.12.2022
Deadline
23.03.2023 17:00
Funding rate
100%
Call budget
€ 4,000,000.00
Estimated EU contribution per project
€ 4,000,000.00
Link to the call
Link to the submission
Call content
Call objectives
Proposals should address the following activities:
- Connect advisors possessing a broad and extensive network of farmers across all EU Member States in an EU advisory network dedicated to the reduction of nutrient losses and optimal use of fertilisers, including bio-based fertilisers and farming techniques which support a sustainable nutrient management, including carbon farming, with a view to sharing experiences on how to best tackle the issues, building on the outcomes of the related EIP-AGRI focus groups and workshops as well as the Horizon 2020 projects and thematic networks.
- Share among the EU advisory network effective and novel approaches to the reduction of nutrient losses and the use of fertilisers, which are sustainable in terms of economic, environmental and social aspects.
- Fill gaps on emerging advisory topics beyond the classical sectoral advice, which is useful in particular in relation with the new obligation for Member States to integrate advisors within their AKIS and their obligation to cover a much broader scope than in the past.
- Provide overall support related to knowledge creation, organisation and sharing.
- Take strong account of cost-benefit elements. Collect and document good examples in this regard, connecting with farmers, intermediates and consumers in Member States to be able to take into account financial aspects and local conditions. Select the best practices, learn about the key success factors, possible quick wins and make them available for (local) exploitation, to ensure financial win-wins for producers, citizens and intermediate actors.
- Integrate the advisors within the EU network on the reduction of nutrient losses and the use of fertilisers into their MS AKIS as much as possible. As innovation brokers they should encourage innovative projects on low-input sustainable farming systems in EIP Operational Groups. They should give hands-on training to farmers and local advisors, lead national thematic and learning networks on the subject, deliver and implement action plans to make farming activities more efficient, reduce farmers’ yield losses, inspire new and incoming farmers or farms at the cross-roads of intergenerational renewal, connect with education and ensure broad communication, support peer-to-peer consulting, develop on-farm demonstrations and demo films distributed widely via social media, and provide specific back-office support for generalist advisors within the national/regional AKIS.
- Explore if the activities of the EU advisory network on the reduction of nutrient losses and use of fertilisers can be scaled up at the level of a number of Member States under a cooperative format. Wherever possible, develop digital advisory tools for common use across the EU. Determine whether common tools can be created to incentivise the implementation of the learnings from this project.
- Include all 27 EU Member States in the EU advisory network, using 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 to discuss project strategy and progress in the various stages of the 2 projects.
- Projects should run at least 5 years. They must implement the multi-actor approach, with a majority of partners being farming advisors with solid field experience.
- 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.
Proposals must implement the multi-actor approach, with a majority of partners being farming advisors active in fertiliser use and with frequent field expertise. Proposals should capitalise and build on the outputs of relevant EIP-AGRI Operational Groups, EIP-AGRI Focus Groups and EIP-AGRI networking activities, as well as those of the Horizon 2020 Thematic Networks related to the reduction of nutrient losses and the use of fertilisers. Proposals should also build on the results of past/ongoing research projects and thematic networks.
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Expected effects and impacts
In support of the European Green Deal, common agricultural policy (CAP), and biodiversity strategies’, the zero pollution action plan objectives and targets, and the sustainable carbon cycles communication, the successful proposal will focus on advisor exchanges across the EU in order to increase the speed of knowledge creation and sharing, capacity building, demonstration of innovative solutions, as well as helping to bring them into practice, which accelerates the needed transitions. 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 changes required within the European Green Deal are dynamic processes that require appropriate governance of AKIS actors. Advisors are key actors with a strong role in guiding and with a big influence on producers’ decisions. A novelty in the post-2020 CAP plans is that advisors must now be integrated within the Member States’ AKIS, and that the scope of their actions has become much broader. They must be able to cover economic, environmental and social domains, as well as be up-to-date on science and innovation. They should be able to translate this knowledge into opportunities, and use and adapt this knowledge to specific local circumstances. This specific topic focuses on the important role advisors can play in relation to the soaring fertilizer prices and the ambition of the of the farm to fork and biodiversity strategies for 2030 to reduce nutrient losses to the environment from both organic and mineral fertilizers by at least 50%; and hence reduce the use of fertilisers by at least 20%, while ensuring no deterioration in soil fertility.
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Expected results
- Progress towards the most urgent policy objectives linked to Cluster 6, as well as the European Green Deal, and in particular the farm to fork strategy, the new CAP, the sustainable carbon cycles communication, with a view to increasing the sustainability of farming, helping to raise awareness and tackling societal challenges, including climate change, and helping to reduce nutrient losses and thereby the use of fertilisers;
- Substitution of mineral fertilisers with sustainable, affordable high-quality bio-based alternatives from different residue and waste streams;
- Support to the CAP cross-cutting objective of modernising the sector by fostering and sharing knowledge, innovation and digitalisation in agriculture and rural areas, and encouraging their uptake[2];
- Development of interaction with regional policymakers and of a potential EU network to discuss institutional challenges to the reduction of nutrient losses and the use of fertilisers in practice, such as bottlenecks, lock-ins, political inertia, ambiguous regulations, inequality between Member States and power imbalances;
- Production of supporting services and materials to facilitate the reduction of nutrient losses and the use of fertilisers, including knowledge networks and peer-to-peer counselling, master classes, advice modules, communication and education materials, effective business models for farm management with less fertilisers, and other risk mitigation tools and measures, etc.;
- Speed up of the introduction, spread and implementation in practice of innovative solutions related to fertiliser use and measures to reduce nutrient losses overall, in particular by:
- creating added value by better linking research, education, advisors and farming practice and encouraging the wider use of available knowledge across the EU;
- learning from innovation actors and projects, resulting in faster sharing and implementation of ready-to-use innovative solutions, spreading them to practitioners and communicating to the scientific community the bottom-up research needs of practice.
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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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