GSS EU Science Funding Gateway

Proposals should focus on knowledge sharing that addresses the most urgent needs of organic farmers, involved in plant production and/or animal husbandry, for impartial and tailored knowledge on the management choices related to the needs, challenges or opportunities they experience in their specific contexts. The specific subthemes of the network should be chosen in a ‘bottom-up’ way. Proposals should focus on the cost/benefit aspects of the practices identified. End-user material for farmers should include conversion and business plans. The differences between countries/regions/territories should be duly taken into consideration.

In this context, proposals should:

• Describe comprehensively the state of available knowledge of organic farming practices on the chosen theme and justify the added-value and the relevance of the theme, and explaining how duplication with ongoing or completed projects and networks is avoided.
• Summarise, share and present – in a language that is easy to understand and is targeted to farmers – the existing best practices and research findings that are ready to be put into practice.
• Deliver an extensive range of useful, applicable and appealing material for organic farmers. This material should be easy to access and understand, making use of audio-visual material wherever possible, including also materials serving education and training. The material should feed into existing dissemination channels most consulted by farmers in the different countries.
• Provide “practice abstracts” in the common EIP-AGRI format, as well as other type of materials, to the European Innovation Partnership (EIP-AGRI) ‘Agricultural Productivity and Sustainability’, as well as to national/regional/local AKIS channels and to the EU-wide interactive knowledge reservoir (HORIZON-CL6-2021-GOVERNANCE-01-24).
• In addition to giving the details on the EIP Operational Groups which are strongly recommended to be involved, wherever possible and relevant to organic farming, provide also details on how further synergies will be built with future EIP Operational Groups and interactive innovation groups operating in the context of the EIP-AGRI.
• Ensure the long-term – beyond the project period – availability of the practical knowledge collected.

Proposals must implement the ‘multi-actor approach’, with a consortium based on a balanced mix of actors with complementary knowledge clearly building on organic farmers, farmers’ groups and advisors, and should run for a minimum of 3 years. Proposals may organise ‘cross-fertilisation’ through sub-networks covering, for example, a region, a language or a production system, in order to better reach and capture knowledge from the targeted farmers and to address context-specific challenges. Outcomes should be widely spread beyond the organic farming community and reach also farmers involved in carbon farming, low-input farming, circular agriculture or agroecology.