GSS EU Science Funding Gateway

Proposals should address the following activities:

• Connect advisors having a broad and extensive network of farmers across all EU Member States in an EU advisory network dedicated to water use, including avoiding water shortage and pollution, with a view to sharing experiences on how to best tackle the issues.
• Share effective and novel approaches among the EU advisory network on water use, which are sustainable in terms of economic, environmental and social aspects.
• Collect and document good examples in this regard, connecting with farmers, intermediates and consumers in Member States to be able to take into account financial aspects and local conditions. Select the best practices, learn about the key success factors, possible quick wins and make them available for (local) exploitation, to ensure financial win-wins for producers, citizens and water companies.
• Integrate the advisors of the EU water use network into their Member State AKIS as much as possible. They should encourage as innovation brokers innovative projects on water use solutions in European innovation partnership “Agricultural productivity and sustainability” (EIP-AGRI) Operational Groups. They should give hands-on training to farmers and local advisors, lead national thematic and learning networks on the subject, deliver and implement action plans to make water use more efficient, reduce farmers’ water use and pollution, inspire new and incoming farmers or farms at the cross-roads of intergenerational renewal, connect with education and ensure broad communication, support peer-to-peer consulting, develop on-farm demonstrations and YouTube demo films, and provide specific back-office support for generalist advisors within the national / regional AKIS.
• Explore if the activities of the EU advisory network on water use can be up scaled at the level of a number of Member States under a cooperative format. Wherever possible, develop digital advisory tools for common use across the EU. Seek if common tools can be created to incentivise the implementation of the learnings from this project.