The CAP in action: new good practices available

Farmers and food feature prominently in the project topics from the EU CAP Network's latest batch of 50 new Good Practices. These stories are provided through National Networks and experts from all EU countries to showcase the diverse mix of benefits that can be brought by the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Climate, water, job creation and rural businesses are also among the recently published Good Practice stories.

Collectively, these new case studies provide a snapshot of the CAP in action. The project stories range from a local farmer network in French Guadeloupe setting up a collective banana packaging station, to a Latvian family farm that diversified into rural tourism. Other inspiring examples include CAP support for nature management concepts developed by farmers and supported by ecologists in Austria, and a small-scale start-up providing new employment opportunities for women in rural Romania.

Each Good Practice story in the database includes a useful context section as well as details about the promoter’s specific objectives, activities, results and lessons learned from this type of project. Further information sources and contact details of the project promoters are also included.

CAP support for farmers, food systems and communities.

Other newly published CAP stories show how the CAP works in practice on the ground for farmers, food systems and communities around rural Europe.

Browsing our Good Practice database, you can read how the CAP is helping an association of fruit and vegetable Producer Organisations in Spain to promote sustainable practices for resource efficiency and climate resilience. You will also discover that peer learning promotes CAP improvements in Slovenia, where digitalisation and networking simplify and support farmers’ efforts for biodiversity.

You can read how a young Dutch dairy farmer is pioneering new business resilience tactics through an innovative barn design, while in Austria climate action benefits from a new digital tool for assessing opportunities on dairy farms to reduce emissions.

Other new Good Practices highlight how the CAP is supporting the resilience, sustainability and competitiveness of food production. You can read about an Italian olive oil company that increased productivity and became more environmentally friendly through CAP funding, and you will get hungry reading about superfoods produced in Estonia that are offering healthy choices for consumers while increasing profit for farmers. You will also learn how whey - a byproduct of cheese production – can be converted into energy, supporting circular economy investments in the Greek dairy sector.

You can find all these CAP success stories as well as dozens more new examples of CAP implementation projects in the EU CAP Network’s Good Practice database, which already features over 1 300 projects (including from Operational Groups), and where some 200 new good practices are added every year.

This extensive database showcases case studies and inspirational ideas illustrating how policy ambition translates into concrete, transferable and replicable actions that are relevant to different types of stakeholders. These projects and initiatives can cover all the priority policy themes and all the Member States, and include policy design and implementation approaches.

Further information about the good practice projects is often highlighted in EU CAP Network publications, such as topic-based Projects Brochures and in our Thematic Groups. To stay up to date with the different strands of our work, subscribe to our monthly newsletter and follow @EUCAPNetwork on social media.