BOND aspires to ‘bring organizations and network development to higher levels in the farming sector in Europe’. Farmers and land managers are central to the project, as they play fundamental roles in the environmental and economic sustainability of the farming sector in Europe, and therefore Europe’s foods and landscapes. BOND concentrates particularly on cooperation between farmers and the potential for the collective action and networking of individuals and groups. This document synthesises the principle outcomes of the four regional BOND reports. These reports above all confirm that farmer-led collective
action can take many directions and can serve various purposes. This is summarised in Table 1, which provides a first glance of the principle orientations and key findings. These orientations have been categorised under the headings Biodiversity & Locality (for Poland and the Czech Republic), Policies for Family Farming (for Portugal and Spain), Regenerative Food (for Hungary and Croatia) and Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) (for Romania, the Republic of Moldova and France). These thematic focal points build on and complement earlier BOND activities, such as the study tours, the interregional forum, the national
workshops, the Regional Policy Roundtables, the fora and platforms, the training of trainers programmes and the experimenting with gaming techniques such as Lego Serious Play – a collective decision support and negotiation tool. These activities underpin, each in their own way, the significance and strength of the face-to-face exchange of experiences, knowledge and practices as triggers for reflection, learning and further collective action. Their success is reflected in the creation of various memoranda of understanding between social groups and movements brought together within BOND with the aim to expand, confirm
and formalise further collaboration and cooperation in line with BOND objectives.
Throughout this document, we link the principle lessons that can be drawn from BOND’s regional reports with experiences and insights gained from other European projects2
that focus on collective action. Similar to BOND, these other projects also acknowledge the critical role of social capital building in its various manifestations as a critical condition for sustainable futures in all their facets. By combining BOND’s findings with the outcomes of these other European projects, we hope to contribute to BOND’s successful ‘see, tell and learn’ approach. To do so, we focus in this synthesis report on the following central topics: 1) the social activities and practices that constitute and drive fully or partly farmer-led collective action; 2) the wider societal benefits and impact of these social activities and practices; 3) the principle success factors of collective action in the current, rather turbulent, times, and 4) the multiplicity of support needs and requirements being addressed by collective action practitioners throughout Europe.

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