What Is the FRAMEwork System for Biodiversity-Friendly Farming?

A new information package sets out the full project approach — from farmer clusters and monitoring tools to policy resources and training — with links to everything you need to get started

The FRAMEwork project has published a promotional and advisory information package that describes the FRAMEwork System for Biodiversity-Sensitive Farming and explains how it can be adopted. The document brings together, in one place, the project's approach to supporting a transition towards biodiversity-friendly farming across Europe — covering its structure, its tools, and its resources.

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What Does it Contain?

The package is organised around the project's three-tier model. The first tier describes Farmer Clusters — local groups of farmers, supported by facilitators, who work collectively to improve biodiversity at landscape scale. The second tier covers the Cluster Resources available to support them: guidelines on starting and managing a cluster, the Farmland Ecosystem Assessment Support Tool (FEAST) for identifying farm habitats and management practices, biodiversity monitoring guides, citizen science protocols and materials, and the Landscape Leaders training programme for people new to farm-level biodiversity management.

The third tier outlines the Knowledge Base — the scientific research, policy analysis, and commercial evidence that informs how clusters operate and how their resources are developed. This includes reports on agri-environment schemes, result-based payments, natural capital, land abandonment, and private incentives for biodiversity.

The document also introduces the Recodo platform, which hosts all of these resources and serves as the project's open-access information hub for farmers, facilitators, researchers, policymakers, and the public. Two success stories — from the Val Graziosa cluster in Italy and the Mostviertel cluster in Austria — illustrate how the approach has worked in practice.

Who will Find it Useful?

The package is aimed at anyone interested in how farmer-led, landscape-scale biodiversity management works in practice. Farm advisors and facilitators will find a clear overview of the tools and training available to support cluster networks. Policymakers can use it to understand how the FRAMEwork approach connects local action to national and EU-level agri-environment schemes. Researchers and project teams working on similar multi-actor initiatives will see how the system is structured and where to find the underlying evidence. And farmers or farming networks considering a cluster-based approach will get a practical sense of what is involved and where to access the resources they need.

Where to read it!

The full information package is available as a free download from Zenodo. All resources referenced in the document can be explored through the Resource Finder on the Recodo platform.