LandShift is proud to be one of the founding members of the newly launched AgroTech Hub Cluster, a collaboration platform that unites several Horizon Europe projects working on agriculture, climate innovation, and sustainable land management. The cluster brings together initiatives that share a common vision: building a more connected, knowledge-driven, and climate-resilient agricultural future for Europe.

Alongside NOSTRADAMUS, AgRimate, Agrarian, EARTHONE, OpenAgri, Climate Farm Demo, and ENFORCE, LandShift is contributing to an ambitious effort to strengthen cooperation, amplify impact, and support the transition toward more sustainable land-use systems across the EU.

Why the Cluster Matters

Across Europe, agriculture faces mounting challenges linked to climate pressures, biodiversity loss, land-use demands, and the need for better data and digital tools. The Cluster was created to help address these challenges collectively by:

• improving knowledge exchange among research and innovation teams

• aligning efforts and avoiding overlap across projects

• developing shared activities that raise visibility and encourage collaboration

• supporting practical pathways for data-driven, nature-based solutions

By joining forces, the projects can reach broader audiences, strengthen their engagement with policymakers, and ensure that their results have greater impact.

Highlights from the first Synergy Meeting

The cluster’s first synergy meeting marked the start of this joint journey. Partners from all projects came together to share their work, exchange perspectives, and define how the cluster will operate.

The session began with introductions and project presentations, allowing partners to better understand each initiative’s goals, regions, and expertise. This created a strong foundation for aligning interests and building meaningful connections.

A co-creation process was then launched to choose the cluster’s official name and visual identity, giving all partners a voice in shaping the shared brand. The group also agreed to establish a bi-monthly meeting rhythm to maintain momentum and ensure regular collaboration.

One of the key outcomes of the meeting was the decision to develop a joint webinar series, bringing together experts from across the projects. The webinars will explore topics such as AI in agriculture, nature-based innovation, data ecosystems, climate modelling, living labs, and open innovation.

Looking Ahead

The Cluster is an important step toward creating a stronger innovation community for Europe’s agriculture and land-use sectors. Through shared activities, coordinated communication, and collective learning, the cluster aims to support stakeholders across Europe in adopting climate-resilient, sustainable and community-centred land-use practices.

As a founding member, LandShift is committed to contributing expertise from its five Living Spaces, its work on nature-based solutions, and its community-driven models for sustainable land planning. Together, the cluster partners are building the foundations for a more collaborative and future-ready agricultural landscape.

PRESS CONTACT

For more information, press materials, or interview requests, please contact:

Nikolaos Sotiriou

Dissemination & Communication Manager,

White Research

[email protected]

One of the core parts of our project is to engage in synergies with other EU-funded projects working on the same/similar topic, in a complementary way.

However, a synergy is a term used very often in the field of Sustainability Science, and to avoid confusion, we refer to it as when two or more interventions’ combined generation results in progress in their activities that is greater than the sum of the individual impacts of each activity. This is inspired by Pedercini et al., 2019, “Harvesting Synergy from Sustainable Development Goals”, available here.

In the case of LandShift, our goal is to engage with other EU-funded projects and initiatives that are working on sustainable land management, nature-based solutions, or similar topics. Our goal is twofold: First, we wish to raise awareness of each other’s projects, inviting the audiences of one project to engage with the content of the other. This can be achieved through activities such as attending each other’s events, mentioning each other in newsletters, and so forth. The second step, however, is a lot more technical. We aim to explore the potential for the research and results of each project to contribute to the scientific advancements of the others. For too long, EU projects have been working in silos, even though we are all working towards the same goal: a more sustainable future.

There are strong interconnections within the EU Projects world, and our first step in engaging in synergies is to identify those EU projects and isolate which ones have the strongest connection, both in terms of a partnership connection as well as a topical one. We have identified a set of projects and have begun reaching out to them. 

One of those projects is NOSTRADAMUS, Data Cube and Copernicus Data for Food Security and European Independence.

Coordinated by the Eratosthenes Centre of Excellence (Cyprus), it is an innovative EU-funded project dedicated to advancing the sustainability and resilience of the agricultural sector in alignment with the Farm to Fork strategy, the Common Agricultural Policy, and the European strategy for data. By developing a robust, real-time digital platform, NOSTRADAMUS harnesses the power of Earth Observation, IoT, and advanced algorithms to optimize resource use, enhance yields, and promote sustainable farming practices.

The primary goal of NOSTRADAMUS is to safeguard EU Food Security and independence in agricultural inputs by creating a centralised Data Cube Ecosystem for real-time, aggregated, and accessible agricultural data, while also developing open-source digital applications to modernise and enhance the efficiency, resilience, and competitiveness of the EU agricultural sector. A key feature of the project includes two Open Calls, providing €400,000 in funding to innovative third-party projects that aim to enhance farm decision-making and develop digital tools for policy creation.

Last week, we had our first LandShift-NOSTRADAMUS meeting, where LandShift coordinators and dissemination leaders met with their counterparts of the NOSTRADAMUS project.

The meeting was very fruitful and very positive: the eagerness and drive for synergies was there.

Some of the topics discussed were:

• Exchanging social media channels, following each other’s projects, and fostering engagement;
• Feature each other’s projects on our respective websites;
• Mention project advancements in each other’s newsletters;
• Jointly participate in specialized or themed events, conferences, and panel discussions;
• Organize and host joint webinars and workshops for mutual stakeholders;

The next steps are now to foster technical synergies between the two projects, where topical experts are able to come together to present, collaborate, and co-generate results.

For further information on NOSTRADAMUS, please take a look:

• Website: https://nostradamus-project.eu/ 
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nostradamusproject/ 
• Twitter: https://x.com/Nostradamus_HE 
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@nostradamusproject 

On our side, we will continue to reach out to other projects and lay the groundwork for future synergies between us and other projects.

Only together can we build a sustainable future.

It’s about synergies, not tradeoffs.