The overall aim of the FACCE ERA-Net Plus action was to allow the 18 Member and Associated State partners to successfully implement a Joint Call on Climate Smart Agriculture as part of the FACCE-JPI action strategy detailed in the Strategic Research Agenda thus further increasing the level of coordination between European research funding bodies in the area of Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change. The Background Document provides more information.

This action contributed to the strategic objective of FACCE-JPI in contributing to building a European Research Area in the domain of agriculture, food security and climate change as well as to the scientific objective of enhancing resilience in agricultural production systems. Consequently, the action facilitated the tackling the societal challenge of ensuring food security in the face of climate change. Specifically, the FACCE ERA-Net Plus action:

• enhanced operational coordination of RTD public funding in Europe by implementing a transnational joint call, thus improving coordination and reducing overlapping between national and EU funding;
• contributed to the ERA by aligning 23 national research programmes;
• contributed to achieving critical mass and ensuring better use of limited resources in the area of adaptation to climate change;
• contributed to delivery of the FACCE-JPI SRA by setting up a joint call on one of the (old) five core themes (adaptation to climate change) through new knowledge generation and innovation;
• provided a leverage effect on national financial contributions through the participation of the EC (adding 33% to the call budget);
• contributed to addressing the societal challenge of sustainable agriculture and food security in the face of climate change through more resilient production systems;
• contributed to research for devising resilient and eco-efficient crop and livestock systems while ensuring conservation of soil, water and genetic resources and taking into account socio-economic aspects of adaptation;
• contributed to technological advances with innovative research for climate smart agriculture – eco-technologies to adapt water management by improved water harvesting, increased water use efficiency and efficient fertilisation practices, to monitor and reduce greenhouse gas, to increase and verify soil and biomass carbon stocks;
• contributed to the experience of the JPI in setting up fast, easy and simple ways to set up transnational projects to improve future calls including in the possible context of an Article185 action by sharing good practices in implementing research programmes.

The ERA-Net Plus Call “Climate Smart Agriculture: Adaptation of agricultural systems in Europe”, co-funded by the European Comission under the seventh Framework Programme (FP7), addressed adaptation of European agriculture to climate change in its broad sense. The Call scope is available here.

A total of 11 projects were selected for funding, in a two-stage submission process. Ffollowing pre-proposal submission (deadline: 2 December 2013), an eligibility check was carried out by the Steering Committee. Pre-proposals were also evaluated to assess their relevance to the scientific scope of this call, whether they matched the objectives of FACCE-JPI and had European added value. As a result, 40 coordinators were invited to submit a full proposal. Of the 39 received, 11 were selected for funding by the Steering Committee on July 1^st, 2014, following a positive evaluation by an international evaluation committee. The indicative total available budget amounted to 18,76 M€ from 22 national funding organisations from 18 countries, and the European Commission.