In the Euro area the unemployment rate increased from 6,4% in 2007 to 10,5% in November 2015. At the same time, ageing of farmers is also a crucial issue that need to be tackled: in 2007 only 6,3% of farmers were younger than 35. Alternative economic models for young farmers and rural entrepreneurs are therefore needed. Successful concepts of business in this field can lead to further and new employment in farming sector, facing the consequences of raising unemployment, integrating and providing services related to maintenance and promotion of European Agricultural Landscapes (EAL) may represent an important resource to guarantee the social and economic viability of farms and rural areas as a whole.Around half of the EU’s land is farmed. That makes agricultural activity essential for emergence and maintenance of the cultural landscapes, including the preservation and the promotion of landscape elements and landforms. Although the people living in rural areas are surrounded by European Agricultural Landscapes (EAL), their knowledge about them in terms of cultural value, history and emergence of it as well as its environmental value is limited, even among farmers themselves. Raising awareness of the worth and cultural value of EAL is just the first step that need to be followed by training farmers, rural entrepreneurs and landowners in order to make them able to “manage” the countryside in the sustainable way that society is asking for.The FEAL project aims at providing young farmers, young rural entrepreneurs and family farmers a training system about conceptualisation and implementation of sustainable/multifunctional farming practices linking the diverse interests of farmers and rural society within EAL- highlighting positive external effects on EAL of their genuine production.The main outputs of the project will be:O1: A report about the State of the Art of the relation between multifunctional/sustainable farming practices and EAL;O2: Case Studies showing best practices of multifunctional/sustainable farming over European countries in different landscape types and socio-economic situation;O3: Complementary OER (interactive e-atlas of EAL + training modules);O4: A training system gathering the previous output in a digital format compatible with OER repositories and e-learning platforms.The training system will be based on the OER methodology thus guaranteeing a totally free access to a wide audience and especially to the project primary target group: young farmers, young rural entrepreneurs and family farmers.Due to the flexibility and the availability free of charges of the training materials even trainees in structural disadvantaged areas or who cannot leave their farms will have barrier-free access to them.The training materials will be edited in English and then translated into the partners languages.The project has been structured in 6 Work Packages, (3 Implementation WPs and 3 Transversal WPs) and aims at reaching the following innovative results and impacts:- FEAL products will represent the first fully open-source training system for implementing sustainable and multifunctional farming practices maintaining and improving EAL. The training materials will be flexible, available through ICT and free of charges. FEAL training system will be based on ICT and e-learning OER thus making its access to easier and available for an high number of potential trainees. - By means of case studies, trainees will have the opportunity of learning through existing real experiences; the users of the training system will have the possibility of knowing what other “virtual colleagues” are actually successfully doing, and adapt solutions and concepts to their own contexts.- An entrepreneurial exchange about the topic will be enabled on regional, national as well as on European level.The FEAL project consortium is made of the following partners:TUZVO (SK): University participating with the Department of Landscape Planning and Design of the Faculty of Ecology and Environmental Sciences.EUCALAND (DE): German non-profit organisation that works on European level and which main aims are research, networking and collecting data on European Agricultural Landscapes.HuL (DE): Independent private consultancy focused on consulting of agricultural and rural family enterprises. OnP (ES): Project managing consulting enterprise which main focus is advising in managing, monitoring and evaluating public funded projects.COAG (ES): Farmers Association. LAG_MT (IT): Local Action Group.BC_Naklo (SI): Public educational institution working in the fields of Agriculture and Rural Development.ELO (BE): European Umbrella organisation gathering European Landowners.
Small farms make a considerable contribution to territorial development, they provide specialised local and regional products as well as support social, cultural, and environmental services. Farming activities which respect the landscape value and heritage bring added value to the landscape and create potential for agri-tourism development. However, agricultural production depends on unpredictable natural conditions and the direct sale of agricultural products from farms is not easy. These reasons motivate farmers to start doing complementary business in non-agricultural activities. The targeted group of the FEAL project are young farmers, young rural entrepreneurs and family farmers. The share of population participating in lifelong learning courses in rural areas of the EU-27, reaches only 6.6% (European Commission, 2013). People living in rural areas may represent a group at risk of exclusion. Therefore, free access to vocational education and training material for people living in rural areas is crucial. Digital training material of the project is available under a Creative Commons License allowing the use and the distribution free of charges thus granting the access to education for everyone. The project’s training concept is adopted to be accessible through the Open Educational Resources (OER). The FEAL project aimed at developing a flexible training system based on case studies that will provide young farmers, young rural entrepreneurs and family farmers the skills and knowledge to implement sustainable farming activities within different European Agricultural Landscapes (EALs). Outputs are available in 7 languages: English, Slovak, German, Spanish, Italian, Slovenian and French, thus making the results accessible to around the 70% of European citizens speaking these languages as mother tongue (European Commission, June 2012). The FEAL consortium consists of eight partners' organisations from Belgium, Germany, Italy, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain. The variety of organisations guarantees a multidisciplinary approach reflecting in educational material; two institutions are public and provide education and research, three agencies focus on project management and provide advisory services for farmers, one is a local action group and one residing in Brussels is a unique federation of national associations from the EU28 representing the interests of the landowners, land and forest managers and rural entrepreneurs at the European political level. The project's conceptual research framework consists of a methodology to compare farming practices in different EALs considering landscape value. The project resulted into the development of a comprehensive and flexible e-learning training system. It is adapted to the learners' heterogeneous conditions showing sustainable and multifunctional farming practices improving the quality of EALs in a pan-European context. The project implemented several innovative elements mirroring in its intellectual outputs: O1: Summary report about the state of the art of the relation between sustainable / multifunctional farming practices and EALs; O2: Case studies. Online database represents best practices of farms situated in different EALs with specific regional and local features reflecting the variety of social and economic systems. Case studies implementing win-win-situations provide the opportunity for trainees to learn through real, successful experiences and, for the first time, an entrepreneurial exchange about the topic on regional, national and European levels; O3: FEAL complementary to OER includes training modules and interactive E-Atlas and both materials are linked with other outputs; O4: Pilot testing and development of the definitive training system – FEAL-EDUWEB and its adaptation to VALOR platform and Moodle. FEAL-EDUWEB contains educational material and online self-evaluation forms for knowledge testing. Farmers, rural development organisations, farmers associations, local action groups and representatives of policy makers were invited to multiplier events organized at the end of the project by the consortium partners. The aim was to raise awareness to stakeholders about the possibilities offered by sustainable farming activities, the win-win-situations within different EALs and to integrate the results of the FEAL project into wider national and European practices and programmes.