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Modernisation of rice growing in Portugal through precision farming techniques

Learn how the EAFRD has supported Orivárzea, a group of rice growers in Portugal, to improve the economic and environmental production of rice by upgrading its inadequate 30-year-old irrigation infrastructure covering about two thirds of the production area (661.9 hectares). New pipelines and an efficient network of sensors reduced energy and input use, whilst making it possible to control and maintain low, but sufficient water levels across all the rice beds.

Find out more about the project here.

The ENRD is collecting examples of projects and initiatives launched primarily by rural communities in coping with the COVID-19 emergency, supporting rural businesses and fostering solidarity with those more vulnerable in this exceptional situation.

The outbreak of COVID-19 is significantly affecting all aspects of life across Europe, threatening our health and challenging our socio-economic systems. In rural areas farmers, rural businesses and communities are all affected. This page aims to disseminate examples that can inspire other rural stakeholders and also provides information about European Commission initiatives aimed at alleviating the current difficulties faced by rural Europe. To submit your contributions, contact: publications@enrd.eu.

Update: the ENRD CP office in Brussels remains closed until further notice due to the COVID-19 outbreak. However, our team remains fully operational and available via email, social media and website. We invite you to keep an eye on the Upcoming Events section of our website, where we list all events - indicating if they are planned to take place, happen online or are cancelled. We do our best to ensure this section is up-to-date. Feel free to contact us at any time!

Reinforcing Europe's resilience: halting biodiversity loss and building a healthy and sustainable food system

The European Commission adopted a comprehensive new Biodiversity Strategy to bring nature back into our lives and a Farm to Fork Strategy for a fair, healthy and environmentally friendly food system. The two strategies are mutually reinforcing and in line with the European Green Deal, bringing together nature, farmers, business and consumers for jointly working towards a competitively sustainable future. They were also accompanied by a document explaining the links between the CAP Reform and the Green Deal.

Read more in the press release.

The European Commission has launched a public consultation to gather citizens’ views on ways to step up climate action and further cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. The consultation aims to collect opinions on the desired level of ambition of climate and energy policies, necessary actions in different sectors and specific policy design to increase climate ambition by 2030. It also aims to gather further information, including roadmaps, policy briefs and studies relevant for deeper greenhouse gas emission reductions.

The ENRD’s competition - Rural Inspiration Awards 2020 - recorded 71 entries this year: Climate change mitigation projects received the most entries (30), followed by Bioeconomy (23) and Climate change adaptation (18).

We are currently evaluating the impressive range of climate change action and bioeconomy benefits that the EAFRD is supporting in all these different projects from rural Europe. Winners will be revealed soon, so make sure to keep an eye on the ENRD’s social media and website for more details about these inspirational development projects.

Our updated EU Rural YouTube channel can help you find and share useful video clips about the ENRD’s activity. We have grouped them to help you easily find what you’re looking for. You can browse by topic: Rural Development programming; Climate Action and Bioeconomy; Rural Networking; LEADER/CLLD; Smart Villages; and Social Inclusion. Visit our inspiring collection of EAFRD project case studies and browse through our catalogue of ‘Most Viewed’ films.

The European Evaluation Helpdesk for Rural Development April Newsletter features articles ranging from the RDP Annual Implementation Reports (AIRs) in 2019 and the ex-ante evaluation of the CAP Strategic Plans, to linking result indicators to specific objectives, and to data management for the assessment of RDP effects. In addition, there is an opportunity to get to know Sophie Helaine, Head of Unit C.4 ‘Monitoring and Evaluation’ in DG AGRI.

Support tools, examples and guiding questions from the European Evaluation Helpdesk are available here to help each Member State to develop its own system for implementing the requirements of the performance monitoring and evaluation framework. The ex-ante evaluation may accompany this process and assess the suitability of the performance monitoring and evaluation framework (PMEF) at the Member State level in order to facilitate reporting and monitoring and evaluation of the performance of the CAP Strategic Plan during its implementation.

DG AGRI with the support of EIB fi-compass is planning  its ‘Sixth annual EU conference on EAFRD financial instruments for agriculture and rural development in 2014-2020’ for 16 November 2020. This year’s conference will focus on the preparation of the 2021-2027 CAP Strategic Plans and the use of EAFRD financial instruments. It will feature 24 country reports on the financing gaps of the agricultural and agri-food sectors of the EU Member States.

A recent ESIF webinar discussed  the most recent changes in the legal basis on financial instruments. You can browse here the presentations from last year’s EAFRD conference organised in Romania, and follow the dedicated fi-compass EAFRD page for further updates related to the 2020 products.

The Erasmus+ project VISENET - Village Social Enterprise learning material, guidance and networking organised a series of workshops for rural communities in Estonia, Finland, Scotland and Romania to foster the development of social enterprises. According to the project, social entrepreneurship can be defined as entrepreneurship that has a strong social goal and where profits are reinvested back into the local community. The rural communities involved in the project identified two main steps for supporting social enterprise: mapping local opportunities which have potential to be turned into businesses with a high social impact, and identifying human, infrastructure and natural assets.

The ENRD recently published updated factsheets on the state of implementation of rural development policy. They show in an easy-to-read format the financial execution and progress against the targets of the Rural Development Programmes by Member State and EAFRD Priority until the end of 2018, based on the most recent Annual Implementation Reports (submitted by MS in June 2019).

This ENRD factsheet highlights the importance of knowledge, data and monitoring to facilitate rural climate action and enable rural actors to communicate success along value chains to both consumers and  wider society.

The Association for Rural Development in Andalucia (ARA) has put together a catalogue of rural development best practices by LEADER groups in the region. It looks at the implementation of the LEADER method and at the design and management of Local Development Strategies. Examples from other Spanish regions are also included.

The Broadband Competence Offices Network has published the new Handbook: ‘Facing the challenges of broadband deployment in rural and remote areas’. This is a handbook for rural policy makers and broadband project managers who wish to roll-out high-speed networks in rural or remote territories, effectively and efficiently. It takes a closer look at the success factors and good practices demonstrated by 12 rural broadband project case studies.

Useful factors for improving the way we look at rural Europe are among the outcomes of our 17th NRN meeting held on 7 May 2020. This was the first dedicated online NRN meeting and over 70 people from 23 Member States took part. It was organised together with the Swedish Rural Network as virtual hosts and the participants embraced the webinar format.

Presentations from the webinar and background documents can be found here.

The fourth meeting of the Thematic Group held on 28 April 2020 was organised in collaboration with the Walloon Rural Network. Participants discussed how climate change mitigation can become economically viable and attractive for rural actors.

Presentations from the webinar and background documents can be found here.