Collective projects

Digitisation represents a huge opportunity to leverage the information and day-to-day knowledge generation on farms. While the more technology savvy farmers may be able to benefit from their data immediately, the majority of the EU’s 12 million farmers will need support from intermediaries such as farm advisors to take up technologies and to make decisions on ICT use adapted to their specific farm context. The best way to motivate independent advisors to embrace the upcoming digital revolution is to build on tools that are already familiar to farmers and advisors.

The EU eGovernment Action Plan 2016-2020 calls on the modernisation of public administrations in Europe and improving the interaction with citizens and businesses. This modernisation aims to reduce administrative burden on stakeholders, including farmers, based on the reuse of common services. A set of cross border services in key policy areas such as health, procurement, justice and identification have been successfully developed in the past through Large Scale Pilots. A key domain of application is the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

The links between the richness of the natural environment and farming practices are complex. Many valuable habitats in Europe are maintained by extensive farming and forestry, but inappropriate agricultural practices and land uses have also had an adverse impact on natural resources, such as soil, water and air pollution, fragmentation of habitats and loss of native biodiversity in farmland landscapes, as well as on climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Increasingly, consumers are paying attention to healthier food diets, "healthy" food attributes (such as "freshness", "naturalness" and "nutritional value") and overall sustainability of production and processing methods. To meet these demands food production and processing need to further evolve in terms of better preservation of the raw material and natural food properties while ensuring healthy, tasty and sustainable food.

Bioeconomy is a major opportunity for regional and local communities. Despite broad political agreement, the potential of many European regions to develop a thriving circular bio-based economy using their own resources remains largely untapped.

The outputs of beekeeping can be private goods (e.g. honey production), public goods and services (e.g. pollination of wild flowers) or in-between (e.g. non-contracted pollination of crops). Many initiatives aim to expand knowledge on honeybee colonies and their environment. However, the lack of a holistic approach makes it difficult to use this knowledge to best effect. Key factors for healthy and sustainable European beekeeping are determined by what happens in or around hives but also by wider socioeconomic and ecological conditions.

The World Health Organization estimates that about 80% of premature heart disease cases, strokes, type 2 diabetes and 40% of cancers could be avoided if the major risk factors for non-communicable diseases, such as unhealthy diets, were eliminated.

The EU food system is an important part of the economy and society in Europe. Given the current context of societal, environmental and economic changes, there is need for constant improvement in terms of productivity, quality, safety, market orientation, adaptability, and international competitiveness. Knowledge of the potential of microbial systems, or microbiomes, throughout the food chains, is a promising means to this end.

In the search for new biological resources, a large unexploited biomass has been identified in the mesopelagic zone (water column between 200 and 1000 m). This largely unknown zone includes micro-organisms, copepods, krill and plankton feeding fish that are lower in the food chain, as well as squids and other higher trophic level fish. This zone is known to play a significant role in the global carbon cycle, where the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide would be ~50% higher without its activities.

Research plays a significant role in helping the agriculture, fisheries, aquaculture and food sectors to cope with the various challenges these sectors face among which ensuring sustainable use of natural resources, and mitigating and adapting to climate change. Yet little information exists on the levels of investments in public and private research and innovation at European and other levels of governance.