Area A – Proposals should:

• Design, test and upscale bottom-up community-led innovative business, cooperation and production models to improve farmers’ position in different value chains and enable them to transition to sustainable agriculture and answer global challenges in locally adapted ways. They should cover a wide diversity of pedoclimatic, technical, organisational and economic conditions, including the complexity and dynamics in various production systems and structure of food value chains (additional sustainability requirements for farmers might lead to further unbalances in market power in the food chain).
• Investigate ways to monitor and verify improved social, environmental and climate performance and translate it into economic profit and competitive advantage for farmers. They should consider existing, emerging and potential markets and platforms, take into consideration sound cost-effective business, cooperation among different actors and production methods, sustainability and profitability.
• Investigate the trends in adoption of innovation in farms and how farmers innovate their business, cooperation or production models when they introduce new products and engage in new business activities.

Aim to connect citizens, private companies and public organisations with farmers to increase demand for sustainable agriculture and create a market for new business, cooperation and production models including for, but not limited to, e-commerce, smart farming, indoor plant factory, aquaponics, unattended horticulture, livestock and fish farms. Traceability for products and standards for safety and quality should also be taken into account.

• Create and widely share via an open access platform practical innovations, tools, best practices and guidelines to successfully develop and implement novel inclusive and sustainable business, cooperation and production models.
• Investigate and support the wide-spread applications of highly scalable business models for modern agricultural purposes including aspects of platform, circular and bio-based economies.
• Consideration should be given to innovative approaches in the development of production technologies, the circularity of the processes with the objective of zero waste, cascading of resources and consider public health as well as consumers’ concerns and demands.

Area B – Proposals are expected to:

• Pilot innovative sustainable business and cooperation models to foster wealth and well-being of rural communities and villages while taking advantage of the green transition though the deployment of demonstrators. These demonstrators should be implemented in various sectors (i.e. but not limited to energy, transport, social services, tourism, culture, digital, etc.) responding to rural communities’ needs.
• Investigate the potential of social economy, cooperatives (or other producer organisations) and of innovative forms of business aggregation and develop at least one of these demonstrators that support local economy by actively involving people in a vulnerable situation.
• Explore and take advantage of cross-sectoral and cross-territory linkages adopting a territorial perspective that aims at improving connectivity of rural areas with surrounding intermediate and urban areas.
• Examine the impacts of different kind of innovation on the development and revitalisation of rural areas and the quality of life and living standards of their residents.
• Identify barriers, as well as drivers (including policies) and enabling conditions for the creation and development of sustainable business models in rural areas.
• Provide recommendations to policy makers, at the local, regional, national and international levels for supporting the creation of sustainable business models fit for the future with the aim to increase quality public services, to make better use of various resources and reduce negative impact on the environment, and that provide new opportunities for rural value chains through different models of innovation.
• Create and widely share via an open access platform practical innovations, tools, best practices and guidelines to successfully develop and implement novel inclusive and sustainable business models.
• Proposals should cover a representative variety of rural areas.

All proposals (independent of the selected focus A or B) should explore social innovation and innovative forms of cooperation.

Beyond open access to scientific publications and research data, open access to software, models, workflows, etc. is required to ensure accelerated uptake of innovation, increase research transparency, support immediate and extensive re-use of research materials, and support collaborative and interdisciplinary work, among others.

Deadline dates:

22 February 2024
17 September 2024