The FAIRshare final conference took place on the 2nd and 3rd of October 2023 in Thessaloniki, Greece. Hosted at the Aristotle’s University of Thessaloniki Conference Centre, the conference was the culmination of 5 years of action, collaboration and innovation demonstrating the potential of digital technologies to transform the agricultural sector and improve outcomes for farmers, advisors and stakeholders.

The project aimed to ensure that farm advisors effectively use the digital tools and services to support a more productive and sustainable agriculture.

The event brought together over 80 registered attendees, with around 70 participants joining in for the two-day gathering.

During the two days of the Conference, engaging keynote presentations, interactive panel discussions and interactive sessions for User Cases presentations were featured, to showcase the outstanding work accomplished by the consortium partners.

Tom Kelly (Teagasc), the Coordinator of the project summarised the FAIRshare journey and shared his personal experience on the major challenges of digital revolution and digital divide at farmer and advisor level.

He also presented his ideas on the value proposition of the project:

  • To learn more about digitalisation and advisor farmer digital interface
  • To develop a stronger network among advisors
  • To share and stimulate new ideas and good practices for digital tools and services
  • To ensure that user friendly tools were developed and adapted to meet the business needs of advisors and farmers
  • To provide skills and motivations for more digital services.

Evi Arachoviti, IfA’s Head of Policy and FAIRshare WP Lead, discussed the User Case model and how this approach contributed to unique insights and played a pivotal role in shaping the outcomes of the project.

What is User Case (UC) Model in FAIRshare:

  • A sectoral group of advisors within an organisation, or a group of independent advisors within a region or a country, describe a challenge they face while supporting the farmers to get onto or progress along the digital age.
  • A new approach followed with targets of what they want to achieve: improve, change or renew an advisory service.
  • Advisors decide and choose/add existing tools to the FAIRshare inventory that they find most appropriate in supporting their farmers clients.

She also shared her views on the major outcomes of User Cases’ journey throughout the lifetime of the project, the added value they brought to FAIRshare and their contribution to the successful completion of this collaborative effort.

To name but a few of these major outcomes:

  • User cases, supported the development of new types of advisory activities with a focus on making farmers better able to handle involvement and investments in digital technologies.
  • Energised advisors to be more proactive in the use of DATS by providing them with the access, training and the motivation to fully support the increased involvement of farmers in digital tech. and services.
  • Central in the search for suitable digital tools is a good understanding of the challenge and the different end-users needs.
  • Great value of peer-to-peer learning and exchange.
  • Demonstrating a clear benefit from using DATS and providing a positive experience, is more likely to encourage the use of digital tools.

During the Carousel Sections of the 2 days’ Conference, the User Cases had the opportunity to showcase, in a 7 min presentation, their work and outcomes to date.

Holly Shearman, IfA’s Head of Livestock & Farm of the Future Programmes took the stage to present IfA’s User Case on ‘OVERCOMING THE CHALLENGE OF ON-FARM MEETING RESTRICTIONS FOR FARM ADVISORS’ focusing on climate friendly farming using the IfA Live online event platform, as well as the IfA Carbon Decision Support Tool comparing farm carbon auditing programmes.

Holly addressed the pearls, puzzling aspects, and proposals within our User Case.

She also discussed the key learnings from the activities in our User Case

  • DATS should be Easy, Attractive, Social and Timely
  • Projects should take account of the farming calendar when planning activities to reduce barriers to users engaging in project activities
  • Collaboration is key!

The event wrapped up with FAIRshare policy guidelines, challenges, recommendations, and expected impact, presented by Vanja Bisevac from CEMA (European Agricultural Machinery Industry Association).

Vanja highlighted that FAIRshare aimed to turn the policy into an opportunity to make EU agriculture smarter and greener. In this sense, policy makers are called to promote:

1) Create AKIS (Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System) where advisors support and encourage farmers to make use of digital opportunities in their farm.

2) Encouraging farmers to share their data on secure platforms and allow data sharing with consent.

3) Supporting development of standards in the field of interoperability and agricultural data sharing.

4) Increasing advanced connectivity infrastructure in rural areas.