TransFarmers aimed to foster cohesion and development of inland territories by noting best practices, implement exchange programs (in the almond and olive orchards) to establish a network for action led by community leadership. The project aimed at offering participants a unique and innovative cross-country learning opportunity to build a more resourceful community, to incentivize businesses and policy makers to engage with the community and foster regional development. Strong rural communities are able to keep tradition alive and build on heritage, both important factors for social cohesion and economic development. TransFarmers wanted to promote the recovery of communities’ soft skills, such as communication, creativity, and leadership in a lively and supportive community, enabling the attraction of youth, economic development by retaining businesses in rural areas, and environmental protection. For the partner organizations it was also an opportunity to exchange learning in terms of organizational procedures, technical knowledge and straighten ties between the organizations.
TransFarmers resulted from acknowledging the gap in educational and vocational offering, for those out of the education system, facing lower incomes, long-term unemployment, higher resistance to change, thus creating a self-feeling of inability and low self-esteem. TransFarmers realized that two similar rural regions in the Iberian Peninsula could assist each other, by providing support towards regenerative landscape, sharing good practices, and building community and individual skills. Communities can be the guardians of traditional farming systems as a heritage that contains a key to sustainable development. Pressured by the challenges of almond orchards, rural communities witness an exodus followed by the loss of important know-how and genetic heritage. This was the motivation of TransFarmers: to build on soft skills of rural communities to enable action to convert these areas into prosperous regions with a stronger economy and natural resources, through community empowerment. This way, case studies of inspiring farmers were identified and exposed to promote discussion, to find and create synergies and achieve more sustainable communities using almond production in Portugal and Spain as the areas of intervention.