Developing strategies and tools to promote the development of entrepreneurial skills (Work package 5)

Introduction

Work packages 2 to 4 contained the main empirical and analytical work of the project. Work package 5 was dedicated to synthesising the results into recommendations and tools at the two levels of actors within the political framework and socio-technical network of farmers on one hand and farmers themselves on the other. The objectives of work package 5 were:

· To devise country specific strategies to overcome barriers for the development of entrepreneurial skills

· To develop recommendations for policy makers and socio-technical network partners

· To develop a diagnostic tool for the self-assessment of farmers concerning entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial skills

To achieve the goals two steps were accomplished. The first step comprised stakeholder seminars in each of the participating countries and the second an international EU seminar. The aim of the seminars was to discuss the results of the project and to develop recommendations on how to foster the development of entrepreneurial skills. The approach, procedure and results of these seminars are described in the following sections 5.2 – 5.3.

As a second outcome, in addition to the recommendations, a self-assessment tool for farmers was elaborated. The concept of this tool is described in section 5.4.

This final report is also part of the synthesis stage, thus the discussion of the results of workshops takes place in the last chapter, Synthesis and Recommendations.

Methodology

The main aim of the seminars was to discuss the results of the project in such a way that participants of the national stakeholder seminars in particular understand the implications of these results for their own institution and are able to generate ideas about how to foster the development of farmers’ entrepreneurial skills. Seminar participants comprised interviewees from the pilot stage, some of the farmers interviewed as part of the main stage, and the participants of the stakeholder workshop in the main stage. The seminar schedule was divided into two parts.

In the first part, the results of the main stage were commented on and discussed. For this purpose a short paper with the main results was prepared by the responsible persons of the main stage and the coordinator. This paper was augmented by the country co-ordinators using interesting national results and sent to the participants some days before the seminar. It formed the basis for the discussion.

For the second part, small groups of similar actors were formed (e.g. a group of farmers, a group of participants in connection with farmers’ associations, a group of policy makers, of researchers, etc.). Each group was given a set of questions to work on: first, they should discuss what implications the results have for their own organisation or business and, second, how the development of entrepreneurial skills of farmers could be fostered in tangible ways in their own organisation or business. The statements and ideas were collected and summarised. They are described in the following section.

The international EU seminar had aims similar to the national stakeholder workshops, only at an EU level rather than a national level. Around 40 participants attended the seminar. In addition to the project consortium, those present included stakeholders from the participating countries, almost all members of the Project Advisory Board, representatives from diverse institutions of the European Commission (DG Agri, DG Entreprise, DG Research, DG Region) and representatives of Copa-Cogeca and Ceja.

The first part of the programme consisted of an introduction to the project, a presentation of the results from each stage of the project along with a discussion of the results, and an additional presentation which compared three ongoing EU research projects with a similar focus (ESoF, COFAMI, IN-SIGHT). As a first synthesis of the work, a presentation was given about the ESoF project in the context of European Policy, especially CAP.

The second part of the day was again dedicated to group work for groups of similar participants, working on the question of how to foster the development of entrepreneurial skills of farmers at EU level. These results are also described in the next section.