The natural environment is increasingly influenced by man due to the constant development of civilization. The soil belongs to those natural resources that are easily degraded, but at the same time, it is a fundamental value for man due to plant and animal production. In the era of today's climate change and its effects, it is essential, and even necessary, to disseminate the idea of agriculture, which aims to promote a sustainable farming system. It consists of the rational use of natural resources, which allows reducing the negative impact of agriculture on the environment and prevents the loss of organic matter in the soil. The issue of agricultural biologicalisation is a complex one, so productive, economic, and above all, social - although this dimension is still noticed in the human consciousness of the social masses on too small a scale. It is essential to conduct agricultural activity in a socially responsible manner. Trends related to environmental protection and respect for the climate force agriculture to conduct production using the latest technologies enabling the use of the smallest amount of chemistry, reduction of energy consumption in production and maintaining the transparency of operations. The project envisages cooperation in a broader dimension than in the case of the internal market - i.e. a single country. In this case, the aim is to develop a catalogue of best practices in the field of agricultural biologicalisation in three neighbouring countries - Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, using the resources of economic entities conducting agricultural activity on a market scale, which is even global, as this is the range of activity of a capital group having agricultural enterprises in these three countries and related to each other in the form of capital ownership. In this dimension, it is an innovative undertaking, in particular innovative in the field of organizational changes in solving significant economic and social problems that require implementation of the idea of agricultural biology in a wide range [i.e. a larger group of countries]. The main goal of the project is to build a lasting partnership to raise awareness by improving the vocational training of agricultural workers in Europe. Achieving the goal will be possible through joint learning of the partners - exchange of experience, as well as confrontation of applied practices and methods. People of the world of science and practitioners from economic life were invited to cooperate. Such a composition of entities in the project makes it possible to achieve the assumed effects in the project, in particular, to define the catalogue of good agricultural biology practices and to spread this idea and practical solutions among a wide range of potential recipients in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The main objective of the project is to build a sustainable partnership for raising awareness by improving the vocational training of European agricultural practitioners. The project will be implemented from 12.2020 to 03.2022 (16 months). As part of the project, six - two/three-day project meetings will be held at each partner’s premises (in TOP FARMS in Poland, two in two different locations). The confrontation, knowledge and comparison of techniques and methods used in the cultivation of the land will enable obtaining information that will be useful both for project participants - persons responsible for planning and implementing agricultural production (learning in the workplace). Also for indirect participants, e.g. farmers cooperating with leading farms, even for Internet users, co-workers and full-time, part-time, postgraduate and doctoral studies. While the participation of key, leading farms in the project will result in immediate effects of biologicalisation of agricultural production in these farms, in principle in the long-term perspective, indirect effects seem to be even more important, because they will allow mass dissemination of effects across the entire national agriculture through imitation by subsequent farms in subsequent years.
Through the project implementation, we expected the following results: - establishing cooperation between entities representing business practice on one hand, and the teaching and research/scientific organisations on the other hand, - exchange of knowledge and experience in the field of biological farming practices, - increasing the project partners' knowledge of the biologization in farming, - obtaining information relevant to their professional development by employees of the project partners, - gaining experience from the implementation of an international and interdisciplinary project, promoting important social goals related to the sustainable farming, - developing a catalogue of good biological farming practices in farming.
The justification for the project acknowledged by the project partners included: - the need for searching of alternatives for commercial farming, - the necessity to undertake actions aiming at protecting the natural environment, - the EU countries’ obligations resulting from the European Green Deal, - the need for learning more about biologization practices in the three selected countries of the EU (project partners), - the need for improving the staff competencies in the field of biologization farming, - the need for dissemination of the knowledge on the biologization farming among the stakeholders dealing with farming and the agri-food industry.