GSS EU Science Funding Gateway

Proposals should address the following activities:

• Tackle the most urgent farmers’ or foresters’ needs by summarising, sharing and presenting – in a language that is easy to understand and is targeted to farmers and foresters – the existing best practices and research findings that are ready to be put into practice, but not sufficiently known or used by practitioners. The specific themes of the networks can be chosen in a ‘bottom-up’ way on the condition that they contribute to the relevant EU policy objectives, including climate mitigation and adaptation.
• Compile a comprehensive description of the state of current farming/forestry practices on the chosen theme to explain the added value of the proposal and the relevance of the theme. Proposals must focus on the cost/benefit aspects of the practices collected and summarised, and clarify how the project avoids duplication with ongoing or completed projects and networks.
• Deliver an extensive range of useful, applicable and appealing end-user material for farmers and foresters.
• This range of material should feed into the existing dissemination channels most consulted by farmers and foresters in the countries.
• As many “practice abstracts” in the common EIP-AGRI format as possible, as well as other types of materials should be provided 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.
• Besides giving the details on the EIP Operational Groups whose involvement is strongly recommended, wherever possible and relevant to the chosen theme, 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.
• Proposals must implement the ‘multi-actor approach’, with a consortium based on a balanced mix of actors with complementary knowledge clearly activating farmers/foresters, farmers’ groups and advisors; and run for a minimum of 3 years.
• In order to better reach and capture knowledge from the targeted farmers/foresters, the networks may organise ‘cross-fertilisation’ through sub-networks covering, for example, a region, a language or a production system.