The need to re-direct agriculture towards innovative approaches that would help to mitigate climate change is urgent and pressing. Agronomy, agroforestry and rural development students should be suitably equipped to look at such innovative approaches, which are often stemming from traditional methods, suitable revisited and redefined, so that they can lead, as professionals, the effort towards mitigating climate change. At the same time, farmers should be also helped, through suitable non-formal learning, to understand how they can change their farming methods to make them more environmentally sensitive, using natural resources wisely, without losing income. Regenerative agriculture can offer substantial results for sustainable agriculture, by enhancing biodiversity “above and below the ground surface”, thus contributing to increased water and nutrient use efficiency and to improved and sustained crop production. Regenerative agriculture proposes new farming techniques that supersede the current concept of conventional agriculture and proposes sustainable management of the soil with significant environmental and economic benefits, especially suitable for arable crops, thus offering farmers the means to conserve and make more efficient use of natural resources.
The project, implemented by a consortium of partners from 5 EU countries (Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Slovenia) with funding from the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Commission, aimed at creating learning material in the field of Regenerative Agriculture, in the format of a course that can be taught face-to-face and online to agronomy students at university level, and adapt also this course to secondary-level education students of agronomy and to non-formal training of farmers.
The project results are now freely available at the project website (www.regina-ra.eu) and include:
- Research on the state of the art regarding Regenerative agriculture in the participating EU countries, and identification of farmers’ needs for skills and knowledge on the subject
- Learning methodology and training modules that can be applied in the 3 levels of education, exploiting innovative ICT tools, visualized case studies reflecting the experience across Europe, practical work and peer learning real-time communication between learners taking part in the project and other stakeholders in their countries/communities.
- Learning content for University students
- Adapted content to the needs of secondary-education agronomy students
- Adapted content to the needs of non-formal adult education, especially targeting farmers’ communities.
- Guide Book on “how to” change to regenerative agriculture, addressed primarily to professional advisors to farmers, and secondarily to farmers themselves.
The target groups of the project include university and secondary education students in related fields to the project; farmers; associations of farmers; and professional advisors of farmers and rural communities.
Partners:
- SZECHENYI ISTVAN UNIVERSITY – Hungary – lead partner
- Farmers’ Association in Hungary
- High School of Agriculture, Hungary
- Forestry and Wood Technology School in Postojna – Slovenia
- Association of Conservation Agriculture in Slovenia
- Euracademy Association – The European Academy for Sustainable Rural Development
- University of Florence
Source: https://regina-ra.eu/home
