AGROECOLOGY Partnership

The AGROECOLOGY Partnership, funded by Horizon Europe, unites the European Commission and 111 partners across 31 Member States, Associated Countries, and Third Countries. The Partnership will support an agriculture sector that is fit to meet the targets and challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss, food security and sovereignty, and the environment, while ensuring a profitable and attractive activity for farmers. The Partnership in particular pools the resources of the EC and the states involved to fund high-level research generating appropriate knowledge and technologies aligned with the core themes described below and in the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda.

The Agroecology Partnership started on 1 January 2024, and will continue until 31 December 2033.

Core theme 1: Redesigning agroecosystems

Supporting the transition to agroecology involves facilitating changes in practices to foster resilient and sustainable ecosystems, including landscape agroecology, territorial planning, decision support tools for farmers, and analyzing social aspects pertinent to the transition.

• Supporting the change of practice to achieve resilient and sustainable ecosystems
• Landscape agroecology and territorial planning
• Decision support tools for farmers
• Analysing social aspects related to agroecology transition

Core theme 2: Redesigning agroecology value chains

Integrating agricultural practices with value chain perspectives entails enhancing traceability of products while also developing and assessing tailored business model.

• Coupling agricultural practices and value chain perspectives
• Traceability of products
• Developing and evaluating adapted business models

Core theme 3: Agroecology Living labs and Research Infrastructures as instruments enhancing multi-actor involvement for AE transition and the acceleration of creation and adoption of innovations

Assessing the individual and collective impact of Agroecology Living Labs (LLs) and Research Infrastructures (RIs), while identifying incentives to drive engagement in the acceleration of agroecology transition.

• Involvement of agroecology living labs and research infrastructures in accelerating agroecology transition
• Assessing the impact of Agroecology Living Labs and Research Infrastructures
• Assessing the individual performance of Agroecology Living Labs and Research Infrastructures
• Finding incentives to engage in agroecology transition

Core theme 4: Enablers of agroecology transition

Developing decision-support tools for risk assessment, policy-making, and landscape planning facilitates the identification of incentives while enhancing coherence between agricultural, environmental, and other sectoral policies.

• Enhancing coherence between agricultural, environmental, and other sectoral policies
• Developing decision-support tools for risk assessment, policy making and landscape planning
• Identification of incentives

Cross-cutting issues to scale-up transitions at the European level

As the core themes of the SRIA primarily focus on research needs related to the farm and landscape levels, cross-cutting issues arise aiming to provide a European perspective by capitalising on the local experiences and outcomes.

Two main items are identified in this regard:

• Networking of AELLs and RIs to accelerate the transfer of locally adopted agroecology innovations
• Measuring effectiveness and progress of changes at the European level