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The federation gives every Lab two SYFERS tools. They register what your Lab does. That registration is also what funders increasingly require. The two are the same work.
Most cooperatives that apply for funding discover the same thing: the application asks for evidence of practice (what you actually do), evidence of governance (how you decide), and evidence of openness (who can see your work). Generating that evidence is usually a separate task on top of the work itself. Two streams of effort, only one of which actually moves the project forward.
The SYFERS tools collapse the two streams into one. The handbook your maintains, the decisions your Council records, the proposals your members consent to, the documents your work generates, all of it flows into the public SYFERS repository. What you do is the registration. What is registered is the evidence funders ask for.
Doing what the federation asks is what funders ask. Registration becomes a byproduct of being a Lab, not a separate job.
This is not an accident of design. It is the design. The federation's research framework was built against the specifications that EU programs, national strategies, and regional funds use to assess regenerative work. If you do the work properly, you generate the evidence properly, in the format that funders read.
§ 02, The two tools
Open source, maintained by the federation, free to all member Labs.
The Lab tool
Daily registration of what your Lab does.
Members, decisions, plant register, energy data, financial flows, project log. The Lab tool turns daily practice into structured records. Outputs flow automatically into the public SYFERS repository, where researchers and stakeholders can find them.
Document Intelligence
Shared document desk, writing helper, research buddy.
Every minute, statute, opinion, plan, and proposal in one searchable archive. Helps you draft new documents in house style. Answers questions across the archive. Hosts the consent-based proposal flow that records every Council decision with a clean paper trail.
§ 03, The mapping
Each row is a dimension funders typically ask about. The adjacent cells show which tool function delivers it.
| Funder requirement | chart.syfers.eu | lens.syfers.eu |
|---|---|---|
| Open accessPublic, citable evidence | Auto-publishes Lab records to the SYFERS public repository. Researchers can cite, stakeholders can read. | Documents tagged for public release flow into the same repository. |
| GovernanceHow decisions are made | Member roster, role assignments, voting weights. | Proposals flow with consent, stand-aside, or object. Every response logged with reason. A complete decision trail. |
| Public engagementStakeholders & citizens | Friends programme, visitor logs, partner relations. | Stakeholder consultation rounds via Proposals, with stand-aside reasoning preserved. |
| EthicsDecision rationale, conflicts | Not directly covered. | Object responses must include substance. Stand-aside reasoning preserved. Conflicts of interest visible in the document trail. |
| MethodologyHow research is done | Living lab data: soil samples, biodiversity counts, energy flows, growth records. | Insights view: timeline of every measurement, every protocol, every result. |
| ReproducibilityCan others build on this? | Plant register, planting protocols, microbusiness models published. | Generate function: any Lab can produce a draft of the federation's standard documents in their own context. |
| ReportingAnnual / mid-term to funder | Activity logs and quantitative data exportable for any reporting period. | Linked events: every document attached to the assembly, deadline, or partner meeting it relates to. |
§ 04, Funds that fit
The funds below are programs that explicitly accept or favour the kind of evidence the SYFERS tools generate: governance trails, public registration, methodology logs, stakeholder engagement. This is not a guarantee of funding. It is a list of programs whose criteria align with what your Lab will already be producing.
European · Living Labs & research
Horizon Europe · Cluster 6 · Calls Feb 2026
Funds Living Labs and lighthouse farms for soil regeneration. Sulitânia is, by name and definition, the kind of project this mission funds.
Food, Bioeconomy, Natural Resources
BIODIV-01: Living labs for ecosystem restoration. FARM2FORK: Sustainable food systems. Two-stage calls accept consortia of Labs across borders.
Sustainability + culture + inclusion
Beautiful, sustainable, inclusive. Lightweight ecological housing, regenerative architecture, community-led design fit here.
EU environment & climate fund
Direct funding for biodiversity, climate adaptation, and ecosystem restoration. Strong fit for syntropic agroforestry and water-retention work.
Cross-cutting Horizon Europe principle
Organisational Responsible Research and Innovation. The governance and openness criteria embedded in many calls. SYFERS tools are built against these.
€95.5B for 2021 to 27
European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development. Investment and operational support for regenerative practices, with national CAP Strategic Plans channelling the funds.
Territorial · Bottom-up
Community-Led Local Development
Bottom-up funding via Local Action Groups for areas of 10,000 to 100,000 inhabitants. Castro Marim falls within an active LAG. Designed for projects exactly your size.
Regional operational programme
Territorial strategy with a Baixo Guadiana sub-programme. Drought adaptation, rural revitalisation, and tourism diversification are explicit priorities.
Sub-regional integrated approach
The territorial development strategy for the eastern Algarve. Sulitânia sits inside its boundary. Specific calls for cooperative ecological projects.
Portugal · National
National strategic framework
Acordo de Parceria. The umbrella plan that channels EU structural funds to Portuguese projects. Includes sustainability, social inclusion, and territorial cohesion priorities.
National Innovation Strategy
Estratégia Nacional de Especialização Inteligente. Aligned with regenerative agriculture, circular economy, and climate-resilient territories.
Plano de Recuperação e Resiliência
Portugal's Recovery and Resilience Plan, EU-backed. Includes specific lines for rural revitalisation, climate transition, and digital transformation in cooperatives.
Specialised programs
European Institute of Innovation & Technology
Regenerative Agriculture Programme, Test Farms, NATI00NS project for soil health. Open calls for southern European farmers and cooperatives.
Private credit · €50M fund
Backed by the European Investment Fund. Mid-term debt for regenerative agriculture SMEs in Portugal. Not a grant, tailored loans for the transition.
What the tools do do is remove the friction between the work itself and the verification of the work. That is enough, if the work is real.
§ 06, In practice
Sulitânia · Castro Marim · 2025 to 2026
Sulitânia submitted an EU ORRI application using documents that were already in the SYFERS repo. Three years of decisions, soil samples, member registrations, and consent rounds. The application drew from records the cooperative had been keeping anyway, not from a separate registration effort.
§ 07, When you are ready
If your cooperative is considering federation, write to us. Tell us what you have built. We will explain what the tools would mean for your specific context and which funds align with the work you are already doing.
You are not signing anything by writing. You are opening a conversation.