A EUROPEAN-WIDE NETWORK OF PILOT FARMERS IMPLEMENTING AND DEMONSTRATING CLIMATE SMART SOLUTIONS FOR A CARBON NEUTRAL EUROPE

Project Information

Climate Farm Demo

Grant agreement ID: 101060212

DOI

10.3030/101060212

EC signature date 20 July 2022

Start date 1 October 2022

End date 30 September 2029

Funded under

• Food, Bioeconomy Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment

Total cost

€ 21 487 127,16

EU contribution

€ 21 487 127,16

Coordinated by

INSTITUT DE L'ELEVAGE
France

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - Climate Farm Demo (A EUROPEAN-WIDE NETWORK OF PILOT FARMERS IMPLEMENTING AND DEMONSTRATING CLIMATE SMART SOLUTIONS FOR A CARBON NEUTRAL EUROPE)

Reporting period: 2024-04-01 to 2025-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

A key challenge for the land use sector is to incentivize measures ensuring that EU activities on forests, soils and agriculture contribute to the Paris Agreement goals and carbon neutrality by 2050 (agriculture is responsible for one-tenth of the European GHG emissions but contributes also to regulate the CO2 uptake via carbon sequestration in soils). However, it is becoming increasingly recognised that, to effectively mitigate the effects of agriculture on climate change, agricultural systems must also be better equipped to adapt to the effects of climate change. Therefore, agricultural sector must adopt best practices and solutions for climate change adaptation and mitigation. Climate Farm Demo (CFD) will strengthen the capacity of European farmers to implement, demonstrate and adopt Climate Smart Farming (CSF) practices across the EU.
CFD therefore aims to 1/ network farmers from 26 European countries, 2/ support and advise pilot farmers in implementing and demonstrating their climate-smart farming practices, and 3/ encourage the mass adoption of climate-smart farming practices across Europe and help support as many farmers as possible in their systemic transition. CFD is above all a dissemination project. People are at the heart of CFD, and particular attention is paid to the 'adoption of change' in the support given to advisors and farmers. CFD draws on the social science expertise of the project's various workpackage steering teams.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

WP1 consolidated the network of demonstration farms and Climate Farm Advisors to further support capacity-building and knowledge exchange physically and digitally. In close collaboration with the ClimateSmartAdvisors project, significant work was done to structure and enable the scaling up of the network of Thematic and Sector leaders, who organised >70 webinars, bringing a wealth of valuable technical knowledge to advisors. A first pool of LightHouse Farms (LHF) has been selected.
WP2 progressed with the establishment of farms' climate baselines and tailored Adaptation & Mitigation Plans. It provided extensive training and guidance materials for Climate Smart Advisors.
WP3: The first 2 demo campaigns were successfully completed, and an intensive support system was implemented to guide advisors. Dynamic Actions Plans have been prepared jointly with WP1 and WP8 to articulate national activities around demos, project collaborations and dissemination/communication.
WP4: The 10 Living Labs continue their work and entered a phase of concretizing results, lessons and solutions with potential value for stakeholders dealing with climate smart farming. Two online Communities of Practice meetings were organized, along with a live event.
WP5: The Farming for Climate platform (developed with ClimateSmartAdvisors) now presents the updated inventory of carbon and environmental tools. Significant work was performed to provide recommendations to the European Commission on CRCF and its methods, contributing to shaping the implementation of carbon farming in Europe.
WP6: A state-of-the-art of existing rewarding mechanisms for climate-smart farming was developed, together a framework for categorization and practical factsheets. 3 policy sessions were organized at the EU Carbon Farming Summit, with a Policy Brief Strategy and Plan for rewarding mechanisms.
WP7 continued its work to adapt the Strategic Plan to new PIPs. CFD is expanding its collaborations with other EU projects and strengthening its interactions with the two sister projects, ClimateSmartAdvisors and ClimateSmartResearch.
WP8 focused on field activities with the Pilot Demo Farmers and their Climate Farm Advisors. The publication of 100 Practice Abstracts helped reach field audiences; DEMOs videos greatly contributed to disseminating Climate Farming Practices implemented by farmers; and the distribution of newsletters reached a large audience.
WP9: The foundations set up at the project’s start have proven robust and flexible enough to provide the adaptability required for managing such a large-scale project. An analysis was conducted to characterize the heterogeneity of Climate Smart Farming across European countries, establishing a five-class typology of different countries and partners according to their maturity regarding climate change and their AKIS organization. This achievement will lay the ground to maximise the project’s impact for climate smart farming.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

O1/ CFD deploys a pan-European project on a massive scale with closely interlinked networks: the network of 1,460 pilot demo farms; the network of +230 Climate Farm Advisors; and the network of 12 thematic areas. This structure is remarkable in its scope and original in its conception.
O2/ CFD promotes the implementation of Climate Smart Farming practices under real conditions to combine an adaptation and mitigation approach, and involve farmers in a process of continuous learning through peer-to-peer exchanges. The consolidation of data from the 1460 farms in all EU countries will constitute a unique analysis.
O3/ 4,500 DEMOs will enable lessons to be capitalized on a never-before-seen scale, which is key to reinforce the transformation of operational knowledge by dissemination intermediaries.
O4/ The originality of CFD lies in its synergy between the 10 Living Labs the 12 thematic and 5 cross-sector groups and the DEMOS, which helps to anticipate more rapid adoption of the innovations, and feeds into reflections on the levers of action for adapting to climate change or mitigating the effects of agriculture on it.
O5/ CFD offers never-before-done benchmarking of carbon and climate methodologies/tools used in the EU. It also aims to develop a monitoring, reporting and control (MRV) process to quantify greenhouse gas reductions.
O6/ The specificity of CFD is to aim to 1/ equip farmers and advisors to integrate the topic of rewarding mechanisms into DEMOs and 2/ develop EU policy recommendations with suggestions from stakeholders.
O7/ The benchmarking to identify related Projects, Initiatives, Policies is an unprecedented initiative at this level, as is the ambition to coordinate joint actions to promote CFD results and to integrate the PIPs results as inputs for the project to avoid any disconnection from the AKIS. CFD strongly collaborates with its sister projects ClimateSmartAdvisors and ClimateSmartResearch, thus bringing farmers, advisors and researchers together around climate-smart farming.
O8/ Diffusion, exploitation and communication are a key element to reach 250,000 stakeholders (including 150,000 farmers) and contribute to long-term change in sustainable practices. Our project is notable as a “real-world laboratory” for testing transfer on such a large scale.