ClimateSmartAdvisors: Connecting and mobilizing the EU agricultural advisory community to support the transition to Climate Smart Farming

Project aim: ClimateSmartAdvisors focuses on the crucial role of advisory services in developing and disseminating climate-smart innovations and practices. The overall goal of the ClimateSmartAdvisors project is to mobilize the agricultural advisory community in the EU. The project seeks to enhance the role of agricultural advisors and advisory service providers by equipping them with the necessary technical and methodological expertise to deliver tailored guidance.

 

About the project: ClimateSmartAdvisors is a pan-European multi-actor network covering 27 countries. Its aim is to boost the EU agricultural advisory community, leading to an acceleration of the adoption of climate-smart (CS) farming practices by the wider farming community within and across EU AKISs. To reach this objective, ClimateSmartAdvisors focuses on the crucial role of advisors in the development and dissemination of CS innovations and practices. The project will organize activities focusing on strengthening the advisors’ capacity in providing CS advice and boosting the advisors’ role in the transition towards CS farming through their involvement in innovation projects, CS-AKIS, and EU projects and initiatives. A number of complementary activities are developed to strengthen the CS advisory capacity of the EU advisory community: 1) an EU-wide network of 260 advisory Communities of Practice (CoP) to support the development of 1500 advisors will form the core of CS knowledge exchange; 2) 140 advisors will receive expert training on selected topics, relevant for their context and for facilitating a CoP; 3) CoPs will internationally exchange knowledge on 12 thematic areas; 4) a knowledge repository will provide advisors with CS tools, practices and approaches developed in the ClimateFarmDemo project and further expanded in ClimateSmartAdvisors, 5) monitoring, evaluation and learning activities will capitalize lessons learned in and outside the project. Activities to boost the advisors’ role in the CS transition include: 1) connecting to local and EU (multi-actor innovation) projects, initiatives, AKIS actors, and policymakers to clarify and address joint needs, challenges, and lessons learned, 2) the set-up of Co-Design Innovation Experiments to learn on how to strengthen the advisors’ role in innovation processes. Finally, to accelerate the widespread results, an ambitious dissemination, exploitation, and communication strategy will be deployed at the EU and national levels.