The core of the NEWBIE project is networking (discussion circles, network meetings promoting and facilitating exchange between practice, advise and research). An important focus is on joint learning in the different participant countries and on transnational learning.

Among the more lasting and widely useful results of the NEWBIE project are the various toolkits developed by the project partners in the period 2018-2021: in total 11 toolkits covering the most important hurdles and needs identified by new entrants and their supportive environment in all nine partners countries.

Toolkits were developed in close cooperation with relevant stakeholders of supportive environments for better addressing the needs and expectations of all included. All developed toolkits are interactive and available online to provide contemporary advice, information and experience for new entrants, advisors, teachers but also established farmers.

Four types of NEWBIE toolkits were developed and tested.

1. Topic specific Toolkits: 8 different toolkits were developed.

2. Umbrella Toolkit: is an integrative online toolkit collecting relevant and accurate information on 13 topics. Available online http://www.newbie-academy.eu/umbrella-toolkit/ in all national languages.

3. Hurdles and solutions - Practice Abstracts browser toolkit: 71 examples are available in English and national languages; available online http://www.newbie-academy.eu/practice-abstracts/.

4. World map – Videos and stories Toolkit: an informative and interactive online toolkit on individual practices-solutions of newbies (100 entries), accessible online http://www.newbie-academy.eu/word-map/, available in national languages and with English subtitles.

During the implementation of the NEWBIE project, the new entrants emphasized the importance of exchanging experiences and good practices within the country and with new entrants across Europe. Most project activities focused on business models and a formal supportive environment. During NEWBIE exchanges, discussion circles and gatherings, the role of family support (moral and financial), mutual understanding and intergenerational assistance on family farms was insufficiently emphasized.

Therefore, as the last exchange, we conducted an exchange of young new entrant families. Three couples from Slovenia visited newbies in the Eastern Flanders (Belgium). They visited six farms, where in addition to the business model of farms, there was emphasis on discussion about relations between family members of the farm, the role of the farm holder and spouse, understanding of farmer's career, different family roles on farm, division of work and leisure time on farm, financial and social security of new entrants, etc. More details on: http://www.newbie-academy.eu/slovenian-exchange-to-belgium/.

Recommendations:

• Exchange of experiences between new entrants from different backgrounds have proven to be very valuable.

• Several similar barriers for newbies in EU countries were identified, hence different approaches and solutions were presented and discussed.

• Gathering in small groups and the possibility of in-depth discussion leads to the new forms of cooperation: between new entrants at home and abroad, educational and research institutions and other actors.

• A supportive environment for new entrants should pay more attention to relationships between farm family members, especially partnership with husband/wife.

As a new entrant, it is crucial to build constructive relations with:

1) Transferor of the farm. If it is the transfer of farm within or outside family, before the farm transfer you need to discuss in detail: core values of farm that you wish to continue, housing needs, roles of family members on farm and its operation after takeover, legal structure and tax consequences, inheritance agreement and retirement planning, capital, financing, costumers and business chains, communication, risks and schedule of transfer. Read more: https://edepot.wur.nl/542347.

2) Family members: Newbie families face both, operational (disease, natural hazards, governmental regulations, etc.) and farm family stressors (caring for an aging parent, education of school kids, etc.). To ensure that intergenerational differences in experience and perspective do not lead to misunderstanding and conflict, it is important for family members to talk and listen to each other in a non-critical and non-judgmental manner. Herewith, each individual should feel encouraged to contribute his or her skills and perspectives which bring benefits to the farm and family.

3) Other newbies and farmers. Farmer-to-farmer knowledge exchange and cooperation with other newbies and farmers.

4) Other institutions (educational and research institutions, advisors, local action group, municipality, etc.) to foster knowledge exchange and build a positive work environment.





Recommendations:

• Start the farm transfer process early enough and discuss all relevant steps in detail. During the takeover period think how two family incomes are achievable.

• Family support (moral, financial) and intergenerational assistance on family farms is very relevant.

• Promoting cooperation and farmer-to-farmer knowledge exchange via farm visits, workshops, etc.

• Establishing formal and informal enabling environment for new entrants.

Several Slovenian new entrants tried to re-connect themselves in localities by applying for LEADER/CLLD (Community-Led Local Development) funds in period 2014-2020. The entire national territory is eligible for this rural development measure with 37 LEADER territories and new entrants might become members of the active network – named local action group. Since LEADER/CLLD supports innovative solutions, entrepreneurship, networking and cooperation in local territories, new entrants might find this as a good opportunity to find financial resources to support their ideas.

Alenka Zapušek (Farm Vrhivšek) in the eastern part of Slovenia is a new comer, focused on hemp, spelt, buckwheat production and processing. As a small organic farmer, she tried to diversify: she designed a rich herbal garden and wanted to share her experience on healthy living with different target groups. She needed the finance to set-up a processing unit and a place for presentations and workshops. Therefore, together with some private entrepreneurs and public institutions in the locality she developed project proposals. The later were chosen for LEADER/CLLD co-financing: the farm was allowed to purchase a distiller (for hemp and herb processing) and a yurt as a meeting and working place, where a combination of renewable materials (made of wood and isolated by hemp stem) were used.

Recommendations

- Get familiar with the Local Development Strategy being implemented by the local action group in your LEADER/CLLD territory.

- Make an operational network around an innovative idea.

- Provide a product or service attractive and useful for local institutions and inhabitants.

Access to information was identified as a very important hurdle for Slovenian new entrants into farming. Several institutions and organizations (e.g. Agricultural advisory service, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food, different farmers´ associations) provide leaflets, brochures, webinars, newspapers, events on issues related to farming. These information resources on agriculture and rural development are focused on established farming sector; there is also some emphasis on young successors, whilst complete newcomers and their concerns have not been addressed.



Therefore, we decided to create an e-newsletter, which would bring relevant information for newcomers, young successors and their supportive environments. We prepared news on events, interesting data, short reports, individual stories, comments, etc. which were generated and inspired by the NEWBIE project findings on national (national discussion circles and steering group meetings) and international level (thematic conferences, bilateral exchange, field visits). We were able to prepare one e-newsletter per year: bringing 20 pages in 2018 and 2019, and expanding to 48 pages in 2020.



Recommendations

- E-newsletter (being available in online and pdf format) reaches a wider audience since it is shared among the members of NEWBIE Network in Slovenia, and also with different agriculture and rural policy- and decision-makers.

- E-newsletter makes new entrants into farming visible in a sector and society as a whole: by pointing out also their results, experiences and issues.

- E-newsletter will be co-created also in the future since there is an interest within identified target groups on information sharing and networking.

A European Innovation Partnership (EIP) Operational Group was set up to ensure the viability and continuation of the traditional farming method for hay fed milk and meat production in Slovenia.

Meat and milk production by feeding animals hay (without silage) is a traditional farming method which is in decline. Ensuring that this type of farming does not disappear is very important since it has minimum environmental impact and limited labour requirements. Therfore the project was set up to establish a stable system of production, processing, promotion and marketing of hay fed meats and milk, and to develop a collective brand (SENENO) to increase market penetration of the products.

The general objectives of the project are:

• Establish the entire production chain and ensure a decent price for agricultural products with modern sales approaches,

• ensure the existence and development of livestock farms in mountainous and mountainous areas (HGO areas),

• increase the production of hay milk for the needs of complementary activities on the farm, as well as industrial processing,

• make hay meat and milk a recognizable food as a product of higher quality.

Recommendations:

• visibility is enabled by a uniform quality and certification scheme for the whole of Slovenia,

• the establishment of a generic-collective brand "SENENO", which can be used by everyone upon payment of a contribution for promotion and compliance with common rules,

• established public database of providers,

• raise awareness of the many benefits and better tastes of hay and milk through appropriate consumer promotion,

• established a network of demonstration farms for hay and milk and an opportunity for new entrants.

More on: https://seneno.info/index.php/o-projektu/

When potential and young farmers consider ideas and models for starting a business, they often turn to beekeeping. They believe beekeeping needs less investments and it is the easiest in animal husbandry. The benefits from bee products for humans and bees for agriculture and nature are enormous and indisputable. Bees, honey, pollen and propolis can be used as indicators of environmental pollution for environmental monitoring.

Successful new entrants and experienced beekeepers recommend to consider:

• Basic knowledge of beekeeping and permanent training is required

• Communication with beekeeping community is crucial, they share knowledge and experience, especially with young and curious beekeepers,they provide advice and help

• Good communication with farmers and synergy actions during plant protection are very important for bee survival

• Permanent attention and strict monitoring to avoid many and specific diseases

• Taking into account climatic changes such as drought or high humidity as well as extreme temperatures

• In bad years with insufficient supply for winter, the beekeeper should know the amount of stocks of each bee family and whether it will be enough to survive winter.

•A successful business needs assessment of the apiary location, availability of enough flowers and minimum number of hives

• The price of organic bee products is better, but requires more skills, efforts, strict monitoring and financing.

Having experience in other sector, usually obtained abroad, young new entrants start small farms, where they raise their children in environmentally friendly agriculture. Newbies generously share their love for nature, pure food, the happiness of being connected to the land in diversification of farming with variety of services. Organizing daily summer child camps on a farm is a funny, creative and very useful service.

So the farm becomes an outdoor school - children learn useful things while playing and having fun. They have the first lessons in farming and acquire skills: sow, transplant, weed, care for animals, compost, learn to recognize plants. And being so close to nature, kids get to know it, love it, learn to value and take care of it. Thus everyone is happy - the farmers who are happy to take care of the children and have additional income, the parents who can work all day, and the happiest are the children to be outdoor, to do interesting and funny things and taste fresh delicious vegetables, picked by themselves.

A good example is Blizkata ferma (Nearby farm) in the village of Negovan, close to Sofia.

There the kids enjoy it and

• learn where potatoes and other vegetables grow

• sow and grow their own vegetables

• pick cucumbers and zucchini themselves and even prepare their own meals

• take carrots out of the ground and taste tomatoes and cherries from a plant

• taste homemade lemonade with fresh herbs and flowers

• build with bales of straw and create with natural materials

• play at will in the fresh air.



Recommendations:

• working on a farm can be amazing, interesting and useful for everyone when is done with a lot of creativity and love.

Based on the experience of Business Incubator - Gotse Delchev in entrepreneurship, partnership with public and private organizations supporting farming, communication with new entrants, we apply key phases for a successful farming business. Together with newbies answer important questions while developing and estimating a business idea:

• Extensive market research: who will be our main customers, their preferences, how often they buy , what agricultural products are in demand, what are the prices of the products we will produce, how they are delivered, how and where they are sold

• Careful study of competition: local producers and importers, what they are good at, what weakness they have, whether there is a lack of a product or service that consumers are looking for, any potential to develop, whether we can offer better products with more added value and customer satisfaction, what we will offer to compete with their prices

• Study of the farming business environment: access to land - if we do not have land will we be able to rent long-term at a reasonable price; access to knowledge - who and how will help us with specific knowledge; access to capital - what finance we need and how we will find it; access to labor; access to innovation

• What are the risks and how to prevent them - will climate change affect our business, will we adapt to the dynamic and unpredictable market.

Recommendations:

• research, planning and action

• persistence and flexibility

Support for farming business idea development www.bi-gd.org and www.naas.government.bg

New entrants consider innovation to make their farms more efficient and competitive and attract young people to agriculture. Traceability is becoming increasingly important for European consumers to ensure the food quality. It can become a reality with block chain technology.



Consumers could track the fruits, vegetables and food, they buy, from the seeds, through their cultivation, packaging, transportation and delivery. All important phases are recorded in a block chain, no possibility of editing, and that guarantees reliability. Any user in a store could scan the QR code of the package by a phone app and traces the complete process and be sure in the quality of products.



Farmers have a competitive advantage when customers are convinced the products they buy are origin and quality-guaranteed. The block chain system can be a digital assistant to farmers for document management, will remind of the action needed, and will help in management of all processes.



An EIP Operational group in Bulgaria is working on the project "Decentralized smart system for tracing the origin and quality of goods " with the aim of improving the visibility of food supply chain, long-term trust between farmer-trader/processor-consumer through transparent and reliable information about origin and food quality.



Recommendations:

• Focused actions of leading research and development teams and ambitious new entrants

• Entrepreneurial approach and strong public support.

In the EU, usually farms add social farming and deliver social services to vulnerable groups, while the Wonder Garden in Dobrich, owned by a foundation, started a social farming to provide employment and a dignified life to 22 young people with intellectual disabilities in 2018. The Wonder Garden uses a model of urban social agriculture in which people with intellectual disabilities have jobs, greater independence and better social status. They grow vegetables, fruit trees and 40 types of flowers in 5 greenhouses of 880 square meters and open area of 0.2 ha.

To access the clients they use variety of channels: small shop in the greenhouses, direct sales in 4 spots in Dobrich, on farmers' markets and by couriers. The social marketing and entrepreneurship help them to overcome the Covid-19 challenges.

How this experience could inspire new entrants:

• The balance between an agri-business and social cause might the right approach

• Partnership is crucial: Dobrich Municipality provided 0.4 hectares municipal land and businesses donated a tractor, seeds, fuel

• Attracting and combining resources such as an NGO financed the start awarding them for the best business plan, Employment Agency finances salaries and insurances of some employees with intellectual disabilities

• Local support: donations and volunteer work and wide dissemination by media and social media support

• And the key component – leadership. Maria Metodieva says: Social entrepreneurship is not for everyone, but if there are yet young people who have leadership skills and are not afraid to do so, then roll up their sleeves and work hard.

Many new entrants start with small areas and produce vegetables, and face challenges complying with legislation. On 20/08/19 there was a discussion circle to clarify legal requirements and to discuss solutions to potential barriers.

It is required:

- Invoicing all sold products. This required registration with the Tax Authorities that has associated costs. Alternatives are:

• Restaurants can self-invoice the producer up to a certain amount;

• The MINGA Cooperative can invoice for the producer, taking over their legal representation, relieving them from associated costs.

- Technical training for application of plant protection products; products can exclusively be applied to crops for which they have been approved and only in the indicated concentrations; Phyto-sanitary products must be stored in a safe and closed storage place, away from the food products

- To transport products for sale under adequate sanitary conditions, in appropriate boxes without any alteration of the products; accompanied by either an Invoice or a Bill of Transport

- Label products - The products must bear the name and address of the producer and country of origin; regulation (EU) No. 1169/201. It is allowed to pack small mixes of horticultural products up to 5 kg (fruits and vegetables);

- Fruit and vegetable producers to be registered as primary producers in the Portuguese National Authority for Animal Health (DGAV), with an operator number assigned to them



Regulation 543/2011 establishes the rules for the trading of fruit and vegetables.

Multifunctional and shared transformation spaces are a good solution for family farmers and new entrants, as they provide adequate and licensed place for processing and packaging produce.

These spaces gather different tools and apparatus to allow for different processing activities. Beyond the “classical” industrial kitchen equipment, they could further include space for milling, distillation, dehydration, press, loom (for wool) and other activities deemed as important by the local actors.

The development and operationalization of such project can be slow and time consuming, not only due to the initial investment, but also due to technical and legal requirements which are not always easy to understand and comply with.

These spaces can not only contribute to creating products with higher added value, but they can also act as incubators for new projects and as a space for knowledge transfer and network creation.



Recommendations:

- The CAEs and types of establishments can be changed later. It is not necessary to execute and plan for all activities right from the start, but to let the project develop organically

- Consult technicians familiar with HACCP certification to outline the project.

- Involve various entities and actors in order to create a shared movement and space.

- Think about applications and projects of this nature at the local level, seeking to involve local authorities in a logic of territorial development

Susana and José started the agri-business ‘Pepe Aromas’ in 2014. They received funding from Young Farmers’ Project, used to establish an organic prickly pear cactus plantation on part of their family land in Central Alentejo. They had conducted extensive research to determine the most suitable crop, both drought resistant with high market potential, and to convince the older generation to try something new. Their business model was based on sales of organic fresh fruit, almost exclusively for the wholesale export market. They faced multiple hurdles such as the high perishability and the short seasonality of the product pushing them to think differently and develop novel products through processing and value addition. They expanded into food and cosmetic lines with differentiated products derived from unused part the cactus plant. They converted their father’s existing olive grove to organic mode now also branded under Pepe Aromas and expanded into the tourism and recreation sector, promoting the local heritage farm landscape and even reconverting an abandoned train station into a shop and visitor centre.

Recommendations

• To find successful solutions, it is critical to conduct research and continuously gather new knowledge on all aspects of the farm, from market dynamics, to crop management, processing and waste reduction.

• Following principles of sustainability and environmental responsibility with the concern to recycle, value all by-products leads to creative thinking and innovations

• Establishing diverse selling outlet channels in place for different types of products and services is an important part of diversification (ex. retail, fairs, online, on farm shop linked to recreation activity)

The Newbie Network Project runs for four years (2018-2021). After the end of the project several offers will still be available, like the different toolkits. BDL and FHS prepare a thematic toolkit on direct marketing opportunities in agriculture in German language. The toolkit is an informational platform that will be publicly available free of charge on BDL’s own website (http://newbie-direktvermarktung.de/). The toolkit especially targets young farmers and other people that are interested in direct marketing opportunities in agriculture.

The toolkit is structured the following way: Preconditions, objectives, products, prices, distribution, marketing, and a checklist. An interactive graphic on the home page gives an overview and enables navigation through the chapters. Every chapter provides a thematic outline and furthermore includes links or websites with more relevant information. If applicable, existing farms are presented in the toolkit to give practical examples. The toolkit serves to give an overview on the topic and to provide a starting point and ideas for (young) farmers that want to enter into agricultural direct marketing. For further questions a contact form is available on the website. The toolkit will be supervised through the Young Farmers Project of BDL beyond the Newbie project.

The network project runs for four years until end of 2021. However, even after this time, (future) new entrants into farming should be able to take advantage of the project’s activities. One key longer lasting output is a set of pedagogical resources. For this purpose, open access materials have been prepared. They will be made available via universities and advisory institutions, but also directly, to the diverse group of newcomers and successors in agriculture.

The pedagogical resources cover four thematic fields of special relevance for new entrants into farming: Entrepreneurship, social and technological innovations, use of non-farming skills to apply on-farm non-agricultural diversification measures and, last but not least, niches in production and marketing. The teaching units can be worked on interactively by the newbies. Videos, photos and field reports from farmers and their farms are used to create practical references and thus illustrate the presented content. In addition to instructive input, newbies also receive tips and assistance for the targeted rethinking of their own future business orientation or new business idea.

The German Newbie Award 2019 went to "Waygu Sauerland". Wagyu, also known as Kobe, is a Japanese breed of cattle that stands for excellent meat quality and high enjoyment. Katrin Schütz and Christoph Willeke took over a derelict farm (non-family succession) in Arnsberg in 2019, thus laying the foundation for their Wagyu Sauerland farm. Using their own resources and financial means, they leased grassland and stables, financed machinery, stable equipment and the purchase of Wagyu cattle. In addition, they set up the Wagyu Sauerland label for successful marketing without previously existing marketing structures. The meat products are promoted via social media and sold via delivery service, their own online shop, and farm-gate sales. In addition to the special meat quality and origin, the advertising strategy also focuses on highlighting the positive nutritional properties of Wagyu meat compared to other beef breeds.

Wagyu Sauerland shows that it is possible to successfully market a high-priced quality product even in a predominant rural environment. The versatile and innovative marketing channels create lucrative sales. Their strategy of building up the business alongside their full-time jobs gave them the necessary financial security and sufficient investment capital. Today, Katrin works full-time as a new entrant into farming. Overall, a coherent and well thought-out concept that convinced the German Newbie Award Jury 2019 to honour the couple for their constant commitment to making agriculture sustainable and innovative! Read more at: https://www.wagyu-sauerland.de/