TechCoach - Sharing and deploying good practices in smart crop farming
Smart farming helps farmers to optimise inputs and adapt farming practices to specific crop needs. Despite the great potential of these technologies to improve agriculture, their adoption in Europe is still low. The TechCoach project aims to promote farmers' ability to assess and apply smart crop farming techniques on farms.
TechCoach will support Operational Groups (OGs*), collaborative innovation projects and AKIS** that provide the means to achieve this objective. In these groups, different stakeholders such as farmers, advisors and research organisations share knowledge and experience around common challenges.
It is important that farmers get support to understand and exploit different innovations, and farmer-centred, well-organised multi-stakeholder groups can make this possible.
The project will build on existing networks and new forms of cooperation across Europe to share and apply the knowledge already gathered to local farming conditions. The project aims to create a strong foundation to help farmers adopt smart farming techniques and improve farm productivity and sustainability.
The TechCoach approach
The TechCoach serve dual purpose: (i) to strengthen the results of the OGs, and (ii) to accelerate the dissemination of these results through networks at both national and EU level. The approach is divided into three phases.
- In the first phase, we will look at how the Operational Groups support their members in adopting smart farming technologies. Good practices will be documented and any gaps identified. At the start of the project, TechCoach will work with around 10 OGs in five countries.
- In the second phase, we will integrate the OGs, other action groups and AKIS actors into national networks. This will allow the sharing of knowledge and experience on how to promote the uptake of smart farming and address the gaps identified.
- In the third phase, we will create cross-border networks across Europe, which will enhance pan-European learning and cooperation on smart crop farming.
One of the outcomes of the project will be an e-learning platform for sharing and learning from best practices in smart agriculture to support crop production. The project will also train innovation "bootcamp" facilitators for multi-stakeholder events organisation across Europe, to ensure continuity for future collaboration between smart agriculture stakeholders. Overall, the project aim is to increase the use of agricultural technologies on farms to improve sustainability and productivity.
*OG= EIP-AGRI Operational Group project co-creating practical solutions for agriculture, forestry and rural communities.
**AKIS= Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System
