EU CAP Network Seminar ‘Skills and lifelong learning for agricultural advisory and training service providers’

To speed up the twin green and digital transition in agriculture and, simultaneously, ensure that it is socially fair and just, it is crucial to have a more skilled and qualified agricultural community. Farmers, advisors and other members of the diverse agricultural workforce must be supported to learn and acquire new skills in a lifelong journey.

Increasing the level of skills and developing new ones is a key outcome of a well-functioning Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System (AKIS). New CAP strategic plans provide several tools through various interventions to foster knowledge exchange and training. Nevertheless, there is an ongoing need for improving interactive and effective approaches to address skills shortages in the agricultural sector – within the context of policies that support AKIS, notably the CAP and the EU Research & Innovation (R&I) programme Horizon Europe. Against this background, several initiatives are taking place at the EU level to support skills-development and lifelong learning. Supported by the European Commission, stakeholders of the agriculture and food industry have established a large-scale skills partnership under the EU Pact for Skills. While 2022 was the European Year of Youth, 2023 marked the start of the European Year of Skills, which continued into 2024.

Moreover, under the new CAP, advisors have an increasingly important place in AKIS with their roles in fostering the exchange of knowledge and innovation, capturing farmers’ needs, acting as innovation brokers, and participating in and sharing results from EIP-AGRI Operational Groups (OGs), Horizon Europe and other R&I projects. Additionally, their expertise is expected to expand to broader environmental, social and economic topics. Therefore, training and upskilling of advisors is necessary to support their expanding role within AKIS.

The main objective of this seminar therefore was to exchange knowledge and identify good practices for training and advisory services to support lifelong learning AKIS-wide.