The project started by selecting farmer and land manager representatives (referred thereafter as “representatives”) from different countries in Europe. This entailed a massive mobilisation, contacting thousands of farmer organisations, identified through the project consortium networks, and calling hundreds of farmers for screening and feedback. Gender balance, age, and relevance of experience in the farming sector were amongst the criteria used during the selection process. Sixty representatives from 22 countries in Europe were successfully selected. The group of sixty was split into groups of 10 for a 5-day study tour "Learning from Success" to visit examples of best practice in Europe. Farmers and land managers learned and interacted with the founders and leaders of successful collective initiatives, in the Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy, Norway and the UK, and they were able to bring back these experiences to their home organisations and countries. These shared experiences gave the opportunity to connect and interact during the study tours in the six countries, and also during a large forum organised in Cordoba, where they were all invited to meet again, thus sharing and exchanging their newly acquired knowledge and experiences.
Following the forum, representatives were able to participate to a four-day Training-of-Trainers course on bonding, bridging and linking, organised by FAO, which became key to developing a Learning Guide for collective initiatives in the food and farming sector freely available for all on the BOND website (
https://www.bondproject.eu/(opens in new window)). The training also provided the basis for each farmer to create an individual action plan to be implemented back home, using the newly acquired tools and concepts. To strengthen this work, starting new collectives and reinforcing existing ones (thus creating an ever-increasing platform of new collectives in Europe), BOND offered a methodology that representatives could use to understand what were the opportunities and constraints they would be facing, and how to resolve them. During this process, representatives were able to analyse major bottlenecks, identify key issues, and understand the importance of collective action to improve their livelihoods and the overall food and farming landscape, both locally and nationally.
BOND organised 13 national workshops in 10 countries (UK, Croatia, Moldova, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, and France), bringing together different actors to debate on key issues and to build new alliances while at the same time providing policy advice. The meetings, attended by a total of 674 people, brought fruitful debates on crucial issues ranging from sanitary regulation to community supported agriculture, social economy, regenerative agriculture and beyond. They resulted in the signing of 13 Memoranda of Understanding thus increasing cooperation and alliances between different players in sustainable agriculture, markets, and the environment.
Building on the national workshops, BOND implemented four policy roundtables (in Hungary, Portugal, Poland and Romania) where policy outcomes spanned from the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to international trade, green public procurement, seed diversity and farmers’ rights, involving 142 participants from 27 countries. Outcomes of these rich debates included 13 reports widely accessible also on the BOND website, including, beyond the main six policy reports, a regulatory framework with examples of best practice, innovative serious-play tools for negotiation, and a repository of 55 stories of collective action from 21 countries in Europe called “The Barn”.
BOND also selected and invited 34 young farmers mostly under 34 years old from 34 countries to debate through a process of online webinars. They produced a “Declaration” for the future of food and farming in Europe. Finally, the last event of the project was to provide the opportunity in one country (and Moldova was selected) to test the tools and methods developed during project implementation, in a real-life situation, as a lab, to be further replicated in other countries to hit impact and scale in Europe. Twelve farmer groups were given the opportunity to test the new tools and they applied them in their own organisations.
