What was the challenge/ problem addressed?
Climate Change is a vast and complex issue that needs to be addressed step-by step.At the moment, Climate change is a big problem to the whole world affecting various sectors especially agriculture as a whole from production to processing as well as final product and therefore impose negative impacts on the health and availability of food to the entire world. Changing mindsets of farmers and farms cannot happen overnight but small changes can have big and large scale ripple effects. Therefore Climate smart Advisors project addresses the challenge of providing tailored advisory services that are needed for the transition to a climate smart agriculture in Europe. The project hopes that this focus on relationship building, and horizontal knowledge exchange will give the right boost to a sustainable agriculture. It is different to the concept of delivering ready-made solutions to advisors as they are directly involved in creating concepts and finally disseminating the concepts to the farmers.
How did you solve the problem?
The project addresses this problem by first identifying barriers and levers with regards to Climate Smart advisory services. It then collects various methods and technical tools to overcome certain barriers/fill gaps, in order to accelerate the transition to a climate smart agriculture in Europe. These tools are collected in a handbook.
At the core of the project are the CoPs (community of practice) which are self-organised learning groups. In total 250 CoPs will be organised across Europe with a total 1500 involved advisors in the whole of Europe. Each CoP addresses one specific issue within a thematic area and then meets 8 times over the course of two years, in order to elaborate solutions and new ideas.
A training concept (Train of Trainers = TTT) is developed (lead FüAk) and afterwards delivered to all Climate Smart Coaches (CSCs), that are the leaders of the CoPs. An updated TTT is delivered at the beginning of each 2-year CoP wave. The TTT uses methods and tools that are developed in the handbook. Through the CoPs, testing and experiments on Demonstration farms will be carried out (one or two farm visits per CoP and linking-up with the sister project Climate Farm Demo (CFD)).
What is innovative in your practical case?
The innovativeness of the project is the strict focus on advisory services through the concept of the CoPs. While many solutions have been developed for the transition to climate smart agriculture, it is the relationship between and among advisors, and their relationship with farmers that requires attention.
What are the success factors in solving the problem?
A success factor is the efficient communication between and among farmers, the right choice of methods for identified challenges and seeking to address clearly defined challenges and objectives.
Unexpected fails, if any
Unexpected failures could be that the CoPs might not always come to an agreement, it is a challenge to achieve concrete outcomes over the course of 2 years, and that last beyond the project.
Lessons learned
At the moment alot has not been learnt, as the project is only one year old and CoPs are starting this year. What we have realised so far is that communication and follow up is the main key towards achievement of any project goal and objectives.
What role does the advisor or advisory service play within the practical case?
Climate Smart Advisors (CSAs) are from both the public and the private sector. In Bavaria CoPs are having both types of advisors in each CoP. Their role is to actively participate in the decision making on the thematic focus the CoP, and what activities are planned over the 8 foreseen meetings in 2 years. They also set the objectives and envisioned outcomes of the CoP. CSAs further participate in technical trainings and on-field demonstrations. In Bavaria some of the CSAs will actively co-organise CoP meetings with the head of the CoP which is staff of FüAk (Annelie Bernhart).
Can your approach be transferred and/or adapted for other innovation challenges and regions?
However, the advisory tools and methods may be shared with external people in the future, via a knowledge repository that will be set up in the near future.
For sharing the experience on the good practice, please contact Annelie Bernhart (annelie.bernhart@fueak.bayern.de Telephone: +49 871 9522-4337)
https://climatesmartadvisors.eu/
