(relevant information is also provided in the Executive Summary and the various Project Managmenent reports, uploaded to the Erasmus+ Dissemination Platform)CONTEXT - RATIONALEFuture farmers and agriculture professional are confronted with severe challenges, especially under financial stress in EU economies and other factors which call for improved competitiveness, a ‘green’ sustainable development and an increase in the agricultural productivity of EU. Such needs are accounted for in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Reform 2014-2020, which foresees the strengthening of three long-term objectives: a) viable food production, b) sustainable management of natural resources and c) balanced territorial development, and provides new policy instruments that reward resource-efficient services that protect the landscape/bio-diversity and innovative trends and technologies in farming and rural development. We considered the development of new transversal skills for agricultural practice absolutely critical in order to cope with the emerging challenges. We adopted the distance-learning paradigm, considering all recent innovations and wide-spread use of e-learning and m-learning systems, in order to develop a sustainable, multilingual courseware freely available to farmers, vets and any practitioner in the agricultural field, including groups at risk. Through a close synergy of key stakeholders in the consortium, we have already reached out to a wide audience and enabled their access to continuing vocational education and training.PARTNER PROFILESSKIFF (Skills for Future Farmers) mobilized six (6) field experts and key stakeholders from Greece, Netherlands, Lithuania and Turkey. 1. The Computer Technology Institute - CTI, GR, (project coordinator) is an IT research organization, supervided by the Greek Ministry of Education.2. The European Institute for Evolution and Integration - EIEO, GR, is an non-profit social enterprise specializing in agricultural topics and technologies.3. MKV Consulting Ltd - MKV, TR, is an SME specializing in education and VET training.4. Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock - MOFAL, TR, is a govermental body.5. Lithuanian Agricultural Advisory Service - LAAS, LT, is non-profit organization established in 1993 by the Lithuanian Ministry of Agriculture, Lithuanian Farmers’ Union and the Lithuanian Association of Agricultural Companies, to provide training, scientific expertise, lab infrastructure and consutling to farmers.6. BLANCON SA, NL, is an SME specializing in agricultural areas and VET training.OBJECTIVES - RESULTSThe consortium developed a sustainable, multilingual training program (see http://future-farmer.eu) under the e-learning and m-learning paradigms, covering six (6) important thematic areas that cut-across most of the above requirements: 1. Organic Farming, 2. Rural Development, 3. Agricultural Markets, 4. Farming Management, 5. Biobased Economy, 6. ICT in Agriculture. In addition to the above six course modules initially described in project's application, the partners developed two (2) additonal courses: a) 'ICT in Agriculture - Precision Farming' (the most successful course, according to user attendance statistics and user evaluation score), b) 'Setting up a Farm'.In addition, a multilingual mobile app that provides weather forecast, agricultural news, and more, has been developed. Finally, a free, easily parameterized e-commerce platform has been developed, targeted to those users who wish to advertise their products through the Internet or even built their own e-shop.ACTIVITIESAll participants have been engaging in wide dissemination actions and at least two multiplier events have been organized in each country. Through a pilot training phase, users have been accessing the platform at their own pace, space and time, taking self-assessment quizzes and providing feedback, online. As of 24-4-2018, 837 users have registered for the online courses.IMPACTThe impact of the online training platform was significant in all countries. For the Greek case in particular, the Head of the General Directorate of Plant Protection of Greek Ministry of Rural Development and Food, after thoroughly checking the e-learning platform, sent a letter to literally all Ministry’s supervised bodies (at regional and prefectural level), inviting them to disseminate further information on SKIFF to end-users.The number of registred users rises steadily every day.Finally, SKIFF’s consortium managed to have four ECVET agreements signed regarding the e-learning modules developed. The project's intellectual outputs, project management activites, multipler events, training activites and transnational meetings are described in detail in material submitted to the Greek Erasmus+ Agency, some of it also uploaded to the Erasmus+ Dissemination Platform.

Europe faces huge and urgent challenges of increasing crop productivity whilst reducing use of synthetic fertilisers and nutrient losses. This proposal is to establish a self-sustaining, multi-actor, Thematic Network called “NUTRI-CHECK NET” that builds farm-level adoption of best field-specific nutrient management practices across Europe. In nine countries farmers’ Crop Nutrition Clubs (CNC) will identify and share the nature of their uncertainties about crop nutrition, their challenges and barriers to change. Decision-systems and nutrition tools (including commercial products, services, and recent research outputs) will be assembled by national experts from across Europe, including leading farmers, into a common online NUTRI-CHECK NET platform. CNCs will then evaluate effectiveness of new protocols and tools selected from the a toolbox to meet their main challenges. Thence they will co-create and adopt farm- and field-specific ‘measure-to-manage’ approaches that address their crop nutrition challenge(s). Evaluations of protocols and tools by farmers and experts will address their ease of use, trustworthiness, costs, and benefits. Initial and final evaluations will be shared across the Network to define ‘best practices’, which will be demonstrated and disseminated widely, including through liaison with other relevant Thematic Networks and EIP-AGRI. The toolbox and best practices will be held accessible and improvable in perpetua on EU FarmBook. Widespread adoption of ‘measure-to-manage’ or ‘check-to-change’ approaches to crop nutrition will enhance nutrient recycling and crop productivity, whilst reducing synthetic fertiliser use and nutrient losses across Europe.

NATI00NS will assist the EU Mission 'A Soil Deal for Europe’ during most of its first "induction and pilot" phase (2021 – 2025), acting as a messenger and conveying awareness-raising messages to national and regional stakeholders, providing access to capacity building materials and information, spurring the discussions on the best Living-Lab (LL) setups to address regional soil needs, and fostering early matchmaking for cross-regional LL clusters. Eventually, the smooth execution of the project will be reflected in the number of high-quality applications received in the first open calls and the funding of the first two waves of LL projects, which can lead the way for the systemic change boosted by the Soil Mission. The takeaways will be also useful for upcoming activities in the Soil Mission's second "expansion and innovation" phase (2025 – 2030) when the rest of the waves of LLs will be selected. NATI00NS' consortium has been carefully selected and formed with the intention of gathering and covering all the necessary expertise needed to ensure the successful execution of the work plan and achievement of the project's objectives. This will, in turn, allow the partners to contribute to the Soil Mission’s expected impact on society, following the achievement of its objectives and goal. On the one hand, the project is counting on top experts on soil science and the co-participatory place-based innovation approaches to be put in place in the Living Labs. On the other hand, NATI00NS is granting adequate national outreach in all EU Member States and Horizon Europe Associated Countries through its 14 partners, its Key network group representatives and all their networks (i.e., BIOEAST, European Network of Living Labs, Soil Health National Hubs, ERIAFF, etc.).

Public administrations responsible for the implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) need to monitor farmers’ compliance to standards. Monitoring is performed by in-field visits and through remote sensing. Due to the high complexity and diversity of the obligations that need to be monitored, both methods have limitations, and entail a high cost for public administrations. RECAP proposes a methodology for improving the efficiency and transparency of the compliance monitoring procedure through a cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) platform which will make use of large volumes of publicly available data provided by satellite remote sensing, and user-generated data provided by farmers through mobile devices (geo-referenced and time-stamped photos). The RECAP platform will extract useful features from Earth Observation open data, correlate them with user-generated and geo-information data available to public organisations, and model this information for enabling the identification of potential breaches of compliance by public authorities and inspectors. RECAP will offer farmers a tool supporting them to comply with regulations imposed by the CAP, providing personalised information for simplifying the interpretation of complex regulations, and early alerts on potential breaches. RECAP will allow agricultural consultants and developers to create add-ons to the main application that extend its functionality and exploit the data collected through an Application Programming Interface (API), and a Software Development Kit (SDK). Consultants will be able to access data available in the platform, subject to security and privacy policies, and to develop their own services within the platform using design tools, libraries, and communication with the database under an open approach. The RECAP services will be tested and validated in an operational environment in 5 countries with the participation of public authorities, farmers, and agricultural consultants.

EUREKA has brought together 21 multi-actors (MA) from 16 member states and 48 supporting organizations, to co-create a stronger and reinforced EU wide agricultural knowledge base by developing an open source e-platform, called the FarmBook. This two-sided market platform, like Facebook, will address the needs and improve the connections between two distinct user groups: MA project partners and MA end users (farmers, foresters, advisors, scientists, policy makers,…). To realize this, EUREKA will first analyze the MA project knowledge supply (outputs, activities, dissemination,…) to get a comprehensive data overview and distinguish do’s and don’ts on how to co-create and transfer knowledge in these projects. From this analysis best practices and recommendations will be formulated into a MA bible for the current MA community and for EIP-AGRI (+ SWG SCAR AKIS) to improve the design of future MA projects. Participatory activities with many MA projects during EUREKA will lay the foundation to build a more engaged MA project community. All available resources that can be used to share amongst the community and to shape and promote the EUREKA outputs will also be mapped. Second, EUREKA will analyze the knowledge demand from potential end users by profiling them and determining their needs, barriers and preferences across four macro-regions in Europe and across the different agricultural sectors. Third, EUREKA will integrate the results of the analysis on the knowledge supply & demand by consulting various expert working groups to co-create a ranking of MA projects and to select the most relevant and high impact agricultural MA project knowledge for the rural and scientific community. Fourth, the FarmBook will be built to present this knowledge in an accessible, standards-based, easily searchable and open source way. Fifth, the FarmBook will be optimized in several iterations with end-user feedback and will be promoted to end users and the MA project community across Europe.