Connecting and mobilizing the EU agricultural advisory community to support the transition to Climate Smart (CS) farming
To reach this objective, ClimateSmartAdvisors focuses on the crucial role of advisors in the development and dissemination of CS innovations and practices. The project will organize activities focusing on strengthening the advisors’ capacity in providing CS advice and boosting the advisors’ role in the transition towards CS farming through their involvement in innovation projects, CS-AKIS, and EU projects and initiatives.
Several complementary activities are developed to strengthen the CS advisory capacity of the EU advisory community:
- An EU-wide network of 260 advisory Communities of Practice (CoP) to support the development of 1500 advisors will form the core of CS knowledge exchange;
- 140 advisors will receive expert training on selected topics, relevant to their context and for facilitating a CoP;
- CoPs will internationally exchange knowledge on 12 thematic areas;
- A knowledge repository will provide advisors with CS tools, practices, and approaches developed in the ClimateFarmDemo project and further expanded in ClimateSmartAdvisors;
- Monitoring, evaluation, and learning activities will capitalize on lessons learned in and outside the project.
Activities to boost the advisors’ role in the CS transition include:
ÖMKi’s role
ÖMKi as the leader of the thematic network ‘Forage production’ is involved in the following tasks:
- development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of annual thematic network plans;
- development and evaluation of the annual knowledge exchange plan in cooperation with CS mentors;
- collaboration with the CFD theme leaders to strengthen knowledge exchange, both from the Pilot Demo Farm (PDF) and from partner’s projects;
- organising knowledge exchange in its thematic area between the associated working groups and other CS AKIS actors at EU level, 1-2 times a year for 6 years (online and at the annual project meeting) and collaboration in organising 2 cross visits;
- sharing new and innovative knowledge in its thematic area and maintaining active links with other projects on similar topics;
- contributing to the implementation of an ambitious dissemination, exploitation and communication strategy at EU and national level to accelerate the widespread sharing of results.