Practice Abstract - Research and innovation

End-user engagement in operational groups and innovative projects

To boost innovation in agriculture and forestry, multi-actor projects must significantly impact end-users. It is not always easy to reach or engage them. This was an interesting point of discussion during the cross-exchange visit on the topic of smart protection organised within the EURAKNOS framework.



One crucial aspect for end-user engagement, is to stimulate and foster interactions between actors. To implement this, peer-to-peer learning is fundamental. Farmers need to be put in the environment to work with other farmers that are willing to demonstrate technical solutions. This can be done by creating hubs of farms and demo events, which will allow farmers who are not in the network to be involved in demonstration activities. This is the case of OG “Smart spraying on Olive Trees”. In fact, in Greece farms are grouped in “cooperatives” that act as role models. If they adopt new technologies or practices the others will follow by themselves, creating an easy environment to disseminate.



Fundamentally, farmers are not the only ones that can benefit from peer-to-peer knowledge exchange. In fact, this happens also between advisors and facilitators trough training and sector meetings. They need to build specific skills for coaching and fostering the knowledge exchange among actors. In fact, technical skills are not enough to create an enabling environment. This was also demonstrated during workshops organized by the EURAKNOS project, where the “ideal” skills that a facilitator should have were defined. One of many is to be able to interact with several groups of people by creating an appropriate space that allows the creation of trust among end-users, who will then be more inclined to actively participate in a project.

Source Project
EURAKNOS
Ongoing | 2019-2021
Main funding source
Horizon 2020 (EU Research and Innovation Programme)
Geographical location
Belgium
Project details

Project Keywords