Zsofia Toth | 30.03. 2025
Above: Schloss Kirchberg in Germany. Our Ukrainian colleagues were unfortunately unable to travel, but happily participated in the group photo. Photo: Josefine Herz
Farmers are crucial for our present and future in Europe. But nowadays farmers are challenged by rising costs, climate change, soil degradation, biodiversity loss and supply chain disruptions. How can we transform production methods to meet these challenges? How to reduce the use of pesticides and fertilisers and make the best use of nature-based, technological and digital solutions?
Engaging farmers to adopt nature-friendly farming methods does not work well if the communication uses scientific language and technical reports written by conservationists. Theoretical toolkits are often not used by the targeted farmers. However, long-term goals overlap between agriculture and nature conservation – the two sides need help to understand each other.
AGRI-NATURE-MENTORS
The new Erasmus+ project AGRI-NATURE-MENTOR, lead by Eurosite, brings together a selected group of Agri-Nature Mentors, in different countries, with the right skills to start talks with farmers and nature managers. The project will build on succesful farmer mentoring initiatives, where the farmer is the central figure, such as in Ireland, the UK, Netherlands, Bavaria (Germany), Austria, Ukraine and the Mediterranean. But not only Europe. Lessons from effective peer-to-peer exchanges from other continents, such as Australia, North and South America, will be used as well.
In order to make the training modules best tailored to the needs of farmers and landowners, a ‘Pooling the knowledge and needs workshop’ was held at the Akademie Schloss Kirchberg in Germany, 10-11 March 2025, facilitated by HAS Green Academy. The main goal of the two days was to collect best practices and expertise from existing mentoring initiatives, where farming practices contribute to overcoming the climate and biodiversity crisis.
Later this year, once the training modules are finalised, Agri-Nature Mentors in the testing countries Ukraine, Italy, Germany and Austria, will complete the program in 2-day courses. Subsequently, in each country these mentors will facilitate peer-to-peer knowledge exchanges with interested mentees (farmers and landowners).
The 2-year Erasmus+ project was launched in December 2024 with a consortium of six organisations: Eurosite, Danube-Carpathian Programme (Ukraine), Österreichisches Kuratorium fur Landtechnik und Landentwicklung (Austria), HAS Green Academy (Netherlands), Instituto Abruzzese per le Aree Protette (Italy) and Anthroposophische Gesellschaft in Deutschland (Germany).
Lively discussion between Italian mentor Manuela Cozzi and IAAP project leader Paola Natale. Photo: Josefine Herz
If you are interested in how the project is progressing and what the next activities are, visit our Eurosite project page. We and the project partners also post updates on social media, so don’t forget to follow us there!
