PRO AKIS – Prospects for Farmers’ Support: Advisory Services in European AKIS
Final Conference, Brussels, Belgium
The University Foundation, 19-20th May 2015
Julie Ingram (University of Gloucestershire, UK) represented the VALERIE project at the PRO AKIS conference, which presented the project’s findings to an audience of policy makers and other stakeholders. PRO AKIS has developed a conceptual framework for assessing Agricultural Innovation and Knowledge Systems (AKIS), compiled an inventory of AKIS institutions and interactions in the EU-27 as a searchable database and detailed reports. Specific focus at the conference was on:
• Diversity of European AKIS
• Impact and evaluation of advisory services within AKIS
• Challenges for European advisory services
• The AKIS inventory and its future
One of the main areas of discussion was the gap between research and practice and the role of advisory services in linking researchers and farmers, particularly with respect to advisers’ skills, knowledge and advisory organisations’ capacity in meeting new demands.
This theme is relevant to VALERIE which aims to boost the outreach of research by extracting and translating “promising” research results into formats for end-users (farmers, advisers, supply chain, actors) and will develop a ‘smart’ search engine (askValerie.eu) for research outputs, for use by advisers and the farm/forestry community in general. This search tool will represent a new resource available to advisers across Europe, and a new dimension to the AKIS. It will enable advisers (farmers and other interested parties) to access research outputs thereby contributing to closing the gap between research and practice.
For more information on the PRO AKIS project visit www.proakis.eu