Small and family farmers provide the bulk of agricultural production at the European and global level. Their activities are critical to achieving sustainable rural transformation and secure safe and healthy food for consumers worldwide. However, rural entrepreneurs cannot survive without careful and targeted support and relevant advice, where raising the quality of Rural Advisory Services (RAS) are needed to effectively address modern challenges. For successful farming practices, the adoption of innovative technologies, and the fulfilment of market-related and administrative challenges, advisory networks have an indispensable role to play. The objective of the project is to strengthen rural advisory services to improve their standards through a monitoring and evaluation system that can simultaneously support the development of a targeted, personalized, work-based, vocational training programme and the establishment of a quality certification scheme. The term precision is not unknown in agriculture, however, we will demonstrate that – besides production technology - it can also be relevant and successfully applied in knowledge transfer, for the sake of service providers and their clients. The learning activities aim to develop competencies in specific areas where our primary focus group, the rural advisors lack or miss adequate capacity, while, by the results of the learning programme, we expect that the quality of work performance will be increased, upon which the certification scheme is to be introduced. Implementing partners will adopt a novel method of using a state-of-the-art (digital, online) service tracking and monitoring system besides traditional data acquisition techniques, to support the collection of more detailed information with regards to increased data quantity and quality, right from the field level (where the service actually takes place). The main target groups are 1) the rural advisors working at the field level (providing assistance for clients to solve their actual problems raising from the everyday practice and introducing innovative methods), 2) the service provider organisations, who coordinate the work of their advisors and responsible for the overall process, and as the secondary group, 3) the clients of the services themselves, primarily farmers and rural entrepreneurs. During the carrying out of the project activities, the partnership will develop six outputs, which are to be built upon each other. The first product will be a Competence Dictionary to identify main business processes, competences, categories, indicators and data sources specific to advisory activity. The Methodologies of RAMONES-PL will describe the process flow and related components of service tracking, monitoring, evaluation and precision learning. In the third step we will set up the information system of data management. In the next stage, the Learning Programme will be implemented in work-based setting, with the participation of 24 rural advisors and nearly 300 service clients. Parallel will run the activities related to certification, which contain the development of a proprietary market oriented quality assurance scheme according to the project concept, and the preparation for an international standard certification. All results necessary and suitable for effective dissemination in the project countries and EU wide, will be summarized and published in the RAMONES Guidebook. The methodology of the project follows the latest professional guidelines and policy recommendations developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN and the Global Forum of Rural Advisory Services (GFRAS), as well as several research findings and methods in the subject area. The innovative elements are related to the work-based, precision, personalized approach, and the advanced use of ICTs, by the digital platform and other tools. Expected performance of service delivery and reputation of advisors will be increased from the employer and the client's side, by higher satisfaction based on the better service. Improved knowledge, skills, increased specific and cross functional competences of the advisors will lead to enhanced confidence, validated by carrying a well-recognizable “badge”, which the industry and the clients accept and honour. Advisors will have opportunity to expand and deepen their farmer contacts. For the partner organisations, the project will provide better understanding of the used innovative approaches. Improved efficiency of the service provision, knowledge base maintenance and training implementation within the organisation will be ensured, as well as of taking end users’ perspective into account more systematically, using feedback loops for service development. The use of the QA scheme ensures enhanced professional image and positive recognition of the service provider as well.
The broader objective of our project was to strengthen rural advisory services to improve their standards through a monitoring and evaluation system that can simultaneously support the development of a targeted, personalized, work-based, vocational training programme and the establishment of a quality certification scheme. The main method applied was based on the data generated by the systematic record-keeping related to service provision, to help identify the areas in which the advisors need professional further training. After gathering and analyzing the data, subsequent areas of improvement that need to be focused were highlighted. These areas were grouped into several main categories / knowledge areas and each participant learned only the content that best suited his/her need. This approach we call precision education that allowed us to collect data from the participants, and after analyzing, enabled the participants to learn a customized curriculum in a more effective, focused and time-saving way. The project aimed to model, test and summarize the experiences of this method.
Small and family farmers provide the bulk of food production in Europe (and the world) and their activities are critical to achieving sustainable rural transformation. However, rural SMEs cannot survive without careful and targeted support and relevant advice, where raising the quality of Rural Advisory Services (RAS) to effectively address modern challenges plays a crucial role. For successful farming practices, the adoption of innovative technologies, and the fulfilment of market-related and administrative challenges, advisory networks have an indispensable role to play. National RAS state accreditation systems' relevance to assess the performance, competence and quality of service provided in the field, at the client’s level, is rather limited and general. Service providers have no means to present evidence to testify the quality and competence of the advisory staff, in lack of their own certified system of monitoring and quality control. Therefore market-based but commercially neutral rural advisory centres need to set up and operate their own system of monitoring, feedback, and evaluation.