Fostering the resilience of agricultural production: from observation of changes to the development of resilience strategies

Resilience of the farming sector to exogenous shocks needs to be boosted. Impacts of climate change in the short- to medium-term are gaining more importance and there is an urgent need to develop resilience strategies. It is also necessary to set up a capacity to observe the short-term to long-term impacts of climate change and reinforce strategies to deal with those impacts.

• An observatory of the impacts of drivers of change on food security should be set up. The observatory should cover at least the following issues related to the impact of climate change: 1) biodiversity and genetic resources, with a focus on agro-biodiversity and invasive species and genetic resources under pressure as a consequence of climate change and 2) sustainable productivity (including impact on photosynthesis), animal and plant diseases and nutritional composition
• The observatory should make use of various types of data, at various geographical scales and should include, as appropriate, citizen observations. It should cover the main biogeographical regions of Europe;
• The observatory should contribute to establish / reinforce strategies to deal with those impacts.
• The impact of shocks should be modelled as relevant for use in policy-relevant areas in order to improve resilience of the agro-food sector.
• Project should contribute to the development of a contingency plan for ensuring food supply and food security that is to be put in place in times of crisis as foreseen in the farm to fork strategy.
• Case study strategies should be developed in a participatory manner to foster the resilience in the short- to long term at various geographic scales. These resilience strategies should also take into account the mitigation and adaptation objectives of the EU. Preparation of the strategies may be supported through grants to third parties. In this case, the proposal must define the process of selecting entities for which financial support will be granted, typically in the order of 60.000 – 200.000 EUR per party. It is expected that up to 30% of requested EU contribution will be devoted to grants to third parties.
• Proposals should ensure that the approach proposed is compatible with and improves the tools used at the European Commission.
• The possible participation of the JRC in the project will ensure that the approach proposed will be compatible with and improve the tools used at the European Commission

In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.