SMART agricultural policy for sustainable transformation

The SMART ambition is to strengthen the provision of private and public goods in agriculture; this will be reached through the overarching objective to co-construct with stakeholders improved smart agricultural policy frameworks based on validated empirical research.
The nature and urgency of agri-food transformation require a simultaneous implementation of short-term policies to reduce the negative effects of the current agricultural regimes and long-term ones to promote the adoption of sustainable innovations. As a response to this complexity and the need for systemic change, “smart policy” is gaining ground as new policy paradigm addressing wicked problems at a systemic level. SMART will develop a new policy paradigm through the development of: A) a coherent framework for intervention among the several regulations and sectoral policies; B) an evidence-based approach to public policy strengthening the accountability of public and private activities and modelling capability to simulate current and future impacts; C) a reflexive space to support informed dialogue among stakeholders to cocreate a shared path toward sustainable transition.
The project is designed to contribute to a better understanding of policy coherence and the evolution of society preference (WP1 - Policy coherence); adopt innovative indicators models to improve the society’s capability to understand current and future policy impact on provision of private and public goods (WP2 - Innovative modelling toolkit); a participatory assessment working on policy lab environment enabling to define a policy roadmap (WP3 – policy roadmap); and continuous dialog between and within a stakeholder network, which comprises also international partners (WP4 -Knowledge Sharing Communication and Impact). In addition, WP5 will be in charge of project coordination and management. SMART will impact simultaneously at conceptual, empirical and applied levels. From a conceptual perspective, SMART will provide a shared vision for analysis to improve the current understanding of the underlying narrative of societal changes, the evolution of F2FS and other EU relevant strategies (biodiversity, soil health, bioeconomy). From an empirical level, SMART will improve the model capability and to measure trade-off between provision of public and private good, through an innovative modelling approach to simulate current and future policy impacts. From an applied perspective, SMART will provide robust evidence-based stakeholders and policy needs to support sustainable transformation of agricultural systems which can support transformative changes towards multi-level sustainable development based on the assessment of private and public good provided by agricultural system.