The main objective of the project will be to research on changes in farmers’ cooperation in the pandemic conditions as a basis for the development of policy instruments for sustainable development of rural areas in Ukraine and Czech Republic.

To achieve the main objective, it is necessary to identify the specific objectives:

• How the level of cooperation between farmers in agricultural areas has changed during the pandemic.

• What impact do such changes have on the social, economic and environmental development of the regions?

• Importance and role that play cooperatives on both the producer and consumer sides in rural and urban areas?

• What solutions provide cooperatives for strengthened linkages between rural and urban areas that include small food producers?

• What challenges for the solidarity of society is meeting Ukraine and the Czech Republic in front of the new challenges of the pandemic.

  Key words: Solidarity Economy; farmers cooperation; rural areas; pandemic; social, economic and environmental effects.
  
  Multidisciplinary research team composition

• Oleksii Goncharenko, PhD, Senior Lecturer at the Department of the Economic, Entrepreneurship and Business-Administration at Sumy State University (Ukraine) – main coordinator and co-researcher;Chama 

• Theodore Ketuama, Member of the Biogas Research Team and PhD student in Sustainable Rural Development at the Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences, Czech University of Life Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic – co-researcher.