The agro-industrial dominant model in the EU is degrading farmer's and consumers’ quality of life, as well as the environment. Agriculture influences food quality, water quality, and biodiversity protection, but there are currently not enough funds allocated to addressing these challenges. The European Commission’s objective for a climate-neutral Europe by 2050 requires the development of a greater number of locally-rooted and resilient farms. In addition, the generational renewal of the agricultural workforce requires massive training efforts. Only 5.6% of all European farms are run by farmers younger than 35 years. In this context, we urgently need to (a) improve the position of farmers in the food supply chain and (b) re-enchant farmers' jobs and train the next generation of farmers. Inspired by a training program developed by Fermes d'Avenir, the "Companionship Program", this project aims at putting on-farm training at the center of the learning process of tomorrow’s farmers, with farms applying sustainable farming practices. More specifically, the project aims at sharing and improving agroecology training practices across several countries in Europe through work-based training accessible to all and facilitating the recognition of formal and informal skills. The project is managed by four partners with long-lasting experience in training the next generation of farmers with on-farm training. It is structured around four training events where each partner share its expertise on specific topics: on-farm training and recognition of skills with numerical badges, management of educational farms, transfer of soil fertility assessment methodologies and didactical approaches on agroforestry horticulture and syntrophy. Participants include training managers amongst partner organizations, and trainers or tutors on agroecological farms (non-vocational adult education) in Belgium, France, and Italy. Up to 24 trainers participate in the exchange of practices and over 100 adult learners are directly benefiting from a new pedagogy. The project also creates opportunities to learn from farming practices in different environments and pedoclimatic conditions. It develops and strengthen the network of agroecology initiatives in Europe, laying the ground for adult learners to be trained on sustainable farming outside their home country.
The objective was two fold : 1 : create connections between our organisations, for potential future projects, or for sharing our developments 2 : find ways to improve each other, find solutions to our difficulties or generate new ideas to improve our programs, on the global organisation program and on the didactics and pedadogy, so to improve the transmission of skills in agroecology
In a context of climat emergency and the need for a transition of the industrial agriculture system, the organisations of this projet gathered under the Erasmus+ program to share and improve the way alternative agriculture can be taught in agrilcuture trainings for adults, using the companions format. Our organisations have been running agrilculture training programs for years, facing the same difficulties : recruitment of trainees, pedagogy, organisation etc. For this reason we have come together to share our ways of conducting our programs, so to find solutions to our common problems or to get inspiration from each other to improve our own programs. This way, the final goal is to improve ourselves to better adress the need for alternative agriculture adult training.