Practice Abstract - Research and innovation

Facilitating Farmer Led Innovation

In a recent virtual EURAKNOS cross exchange, Russ Carrington, shared insights on how knowledge exchange and innovation among Pasture Fed Livestock Association’s 600 strong membership was facilitated. Russ was joined by Kate Still (Farming Programme Delivery Manager at Soil Association), Dr Lisa Morgans (Head of Precision Livestock at Innovation for Agriculture) and Dr Jessica Stokes (Hennovation facilitator) who also shared key tips:

• Use online forums to compliment facilitation in the field, reinforcing a culture which fosters an inclusive community of practice, building trust and enabling collaborative knowledge exchange.

• The facilitators are the antenna of the group, to continually assess, monitor and reflect on where the community are on their innovation journey; being flexible and adaptive to changing needs, energy and aspirations.

• Farmer led innovation is for all farmers, but different groups of farmers will be at different stages on the innovation journey – the facilitator is to recognise this and respond accordingly, i.e. introducing external resource, knowledge or inspiration.



The interactive session highlighted new opportunities that have emerged for facilitating farmer led innovation (in the era of COVID), such as:

• The rise of virtual interactive farm tours, zoom webinars and flipped labs/classrooms

• The emerging use of WhatsApp and podcasts to create communities of practice and share farmer led innovation



The full webinar is available here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBgazDw-ba0 along with a podcast on facilitating farmer led innovation to address multiple societal challenges, such as ecological breakdown, climate change and Brexit

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4RF5BHgMohSwYjSCRpeF0w

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

Project Keywords