EUREKA! An interactive platform for knowledge is created!

During the last two years, the EUREKA Horizon 2020 project has developed and tested a user-friendly platform: the EU FarmBook. The platform brings together new knowledge from EU-funded research and innovation projects to make it available in one place for the farmers, foresters and advisors across Europe, who need it the most.

Research knowledge and innovation are key enablers of the changes needed in agriculture, forestry and the broader rural economy to accelerate the necessary transition to more sustainable production systems by 2030. EUREKA (and its sister project EURAKNOS) were founded on the idea that innovation in European agriculture and forestry can be accelerated by improved (digital) exchange of best practices between farmers, researchers and advisors from different sectors and Member States. The result of the two-year EUREKA project is a working pilot version of the ‘EU FarmBook’. It is intended to serve as a primary EU-wide, open-access platform that connects research and practice to ensure that the practice-ready knowledge and innovative solutions generated by EU-funded projects are more readily available and easily accessible to farmers, foresters, advisors and other potential users.

Information, innovative solutions and best practices need to reach farmers and advisors more easily

During March 2022, a broad range of relevant target groups were invited to participate in online national- or local-level webinars where they were introduced to the work of the EUREKA project and the ambitious goals for the EU FarmBook. The participants represented both possible end-users (farmers, foresters, advisors, etc.) looking for up-to-date, practical information and the latest research results, and also participants in multi-actor projects interested in sharing knowledge from their respective projects.

Main conclusions from the national webinars:

Participants expressed a positive attitude towards:

- the user interface, overview of content and search functions of EU FarmBook

- the “Community” section (subpages giving users a possibility to ask questions, give comments and share content with other users of the platform) and the “Experts” section (subpages in each category intended to give the users an easy overview of contact details of experts)..

Follow-up project will support knowledge exchange between all AKIS actors in European Union

A new project under Horizon Europe, named ‘EU FarmBook’ (like the digital platform itself), will demonstrate both the feasibility of such a knowledge hub and the immense interest and support for it among Europe’s agriculture/forestry researchers, policymakers, and practitioners.  In the first phase of this seven-year initiative, the pilot version of the EU FarmBook will undergo a series of significant updates based on the user feedback collected so far. Project partners and developers will continue to improve user-friendliness (including multilingual functionality), search performance, management of the Community and Expert sections, and last, but not least, ensure cooperation and connection with other databases to increase the number of high-quality knowledge objects accessible via the EU FarmBook platform. Another essential effort in the EU FarmBook project will be working to ensure that the platform is effectively integrated, through networking and cooperation activities, with all key actors in EU- and national-level AKISs, including the newly established post-2020 national AKIS Coordination Bodies, national CAP Networks and EU-level EIP-AGRI Support Facility.

• Take a sneak peek: See the first live version of the EU FarmBook (pilot version)
• User manual for the EU FarmBook: Download a user manual for adding digital 'knowledge objects' to the online platform
• Visit the website of EUREKA: https://h2020eureka.eu/
• Stay involved with the EU FarmBook development of the new project from the autumn or contact project coordinator Pieter Spanoghe: pieter.Spanoghe@UGent.be