Towards a more sustainable agricultural model: the Institute of Plant Sciences coordinates the SUNRISE project, the new European network to promote agroecological transition through Living Labs
An innovative network of agroecological Living Labs across Europe to accompany and accelerate the agroecological transition in European agricultural systems. This is the main objective of SUNRISE – Supporting the agroecological transition through Living Labs Networks, a project funded by the Agroecology Partnership and coordinated by Paolo Bàrberi, associate professor of Agronomy and Herbaceous Crops at the Institute of Plant Sciences of the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa.
The project kick-off meeting took place on April 10 and 11 at the Sant'Anna School in Pisa.
The structured network of agroecological Living Labs for a more inclusive and sustainable agricultural model
With SUNRISE, Europe is betting on a more resilient, inclusive and sustainable agricultural model, which starts from the territories and enhances the shared knowledge of those who every day cultivate, study, advise and support a more sustainable agriculture.
The project's mission is ambitious: to build a structured network of Agroecological Living Labs (AELLs), starting with five already active and another five in development, distributed throughout Europe. Each Living Lab will be rooted in a regional or sub-regional context and built around multi-actor teams (MATs) already engaged in agroecological practices and supply chains, at more or less advanced stages.
The MATs will bring together organic and conventional farmers, agricultural consultants, agri-food companies, civil society organizations, policy makers and researchers. From the early stages of the project, these groups will be the driving force behind the co-creation, experimentation and sharing of agroecological innovations, in a highly participatory approach.
Each AELL will have research infrastructures already active in the field of agroecology where the co-created practices will be tested. Alongside these, the pilot farms will host field demonstration activities, becoming reference points for agroecology in the area, places for meeting, training and the diffusion of innovations.
The heart of the project is a process, common to all the countries involved, that will guide the co-design, co-experimentation and validation of the agroecological solutions developed within each AELL. The practices will be chosen based on local agronomic priorities, already identified in the proposal phase, and will concern the main European cropping systems: cereal, horticultural, fruit, livestock and agroforestry.
SUNRISE also aims to contribute to the definition of guidelines for the creation and functioning of AELLs and to provide policy recommendations to concretely support the agroecological transition. Thanks to the synergy between local Living Labs and a shared vision at the European level, the results of the project can be transferred and adapted to other contexts, creating an international and multi-actor agroecological network.
The consortium of the SUNRISE project
SUNRISE involves thirteen partners from eleven European countries. In addition to the Agroecology Group of the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, the following are participating in the project: the University of Pisa, the Estonian University of Life Sciences (Estonia), the Thünen Institute and the Julius Kühn Institute (Germany), the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (Sweden),
the University of Barcelona (Spain), the University of Groningen (Netherlands), the Agricultural University of Iceland (Iceland), the Agroscope research center (Switzerland), the University of Agronomic Sciences and Veterinary Medicine of Bucharest (Romania), the Institute of Landscape Ecology of Slovak Academy of Sciences (Slovakia) and Stratagem Energy (Cyprus).
