“Anyone can get a ticket on the FARMTrain” The main objective of this project is to create an innovative hands-on training program for adult learners (FARMTrain) in order to accept shared responsibility to keep our rural-urban areas connected and alive in a sustainable way. The hands-on training provides mentoring and educational opportunities directly on the farm level between farmers and interns on training farms. FARMTrain will be open to anyone regardless of their different backgrounds and education. The range of composition of production enterprises as well as geographical distribution play important roles in developing proper training and educational capacities - these programs must be adequate for adult learners delivering practical, useful, hands-on knowledge. It is emphasised here because most of the trainings or advisory services in European countries are very theoretical; there is often a “reality gap” between trainers and learners. The different, innovative approach in FARMTrain program is the practical guidance on how to build the internship on farms and how to transfer farmer’s knowledge to adult learners (interns). The novelty of this training program lies in its content - it teaches farmers how to gain competences to become mentors - to improve their soft skills in interaction with interns and vice versa interns are motivated to have shared responsibility for agroecological systems and environmental protection in general. The innovation of the project lies also in its scope as it does not focus solely on professionals but it also involves exchange of knowledge between professionals and other stakeholders such as hobby farmers, community or urban gardeners. The structure of the innovative hands-on training program for adult learners (FARMTrain) is based on an European universal program which will be compile by the intellectual outputs of this project. The national modifications of FARMTrain program will allow adjusting the program to the exact needs of the target groups both in partner countries and also in countries not involved in this partnership. It provides the knowledge and skills on how to establish a new way of cooperation with different types of stakeholders, how to transfer the skills among adult learners on training farms, on hands-on learning and on training seminars to create more opportunities to learn shared responsibilities. Altogether, the project will support the educational innovation in farming sector and beyond, as it will teach farmers to become well-educated mentors with competences in the exchange of good practices. It is aimed at producing, sharing and enriching resources for interns (both general and technical) about farming skills and environmental protection within the agro-ecosystem towards various groups of stakeholders. We also anticipate that the national FARMTrain program will launch up the increase in number of training farms not only in countries of this partnership but Europe-wide. This added value will not only support the development of other training farms and their networking on FARMTrain Platform. FARMTrain program can be a useful aid in long-life adult education and training, as well as an inspiration in setting up new cooperatives and creative farmer associations. The network of training farms with an innovative, hands-on program (FARMTrain) can be very resilient as it has developed from a serious need and with strong participation of farmers. We want the FARMTrain program to be socially inclusive and open for a broad scale of adult learners to join the program in the future.
The project partnership wanted to create gateways to the on-farm training in the project countries and create practical tools that would facilitate the to-be interns and farmers to start an on-farm training and last but not least initiate on-farm training programmes in the project countries and furthermore we wanted to network also existing training programmes in Europe and initiate future cooperation. Furthermore the greater objective of the project was to bring a new innovative approach to the training of the farming and involve hands-on and practical training in this field as much as possible and contribute to the transformation of our food and farming system towards more sustainable one in general.
The intention to apply for this project was to foster the development of the sector of agroecological faming in partner countries by means of providing a tailor-made educational hands-on programme for new entrants to the farming, ie. not only farming professionals but people with no or little farming background in particular. During the application phase of this project we have identified that there is a great need for hands-on training in the agroecological farming sector among the new entrants to learn on-farms and from the farmers. During the course of the project it has proven right that the farming and agroecological farming especially is best learned and taught in practice with hands-on methods and with farmers as mentors and trainers. On the other hand the project has responded to the need of agroecological farmers to share their knowledge and long-term practice with the next generation of farmers and land stewards. This hypothesis has also proven right as we have gained a huge interest among the farmers who wanted to share their knowledge with new entrants and provide innovative and practical training to the interns and contribute to the development and sustenance of the sector of agroecological farming in general.