NEFERTITI project is funded under Horizon 2020. The project focuses on the establishment of 10 interactive thematic networks covering the 3 main agricultural sectors: animal production, arable farming and horticultural production. They bring together 45 regional hubs of demo-farmers and innovation actors – advisers, cooperatives, NGOs, industry, education, researchers and policy makers. This unique network comprising 32 partners from 17 countries and coordinated by ACTA, the head of Network of the French Agricultural Technical Institutes. The overall objective is to establish an EU-wide highly connected network of demonstration and pilot farms designed to enhance knowledge exchanges, cross fertilization among actors and efficient innovation uptake in the farming sector through peer-to-peer demonstration of techniques on 10 major agricultural challenges in Europe.
Demonstration events focus on showing and understanding innovation within a working farm context or within a local setting. There are many different types of demo events, but they all have in common to base on a certain kind of knowledge exchanges: farmer to farmer and farmer to innovations actors. These exchanges can have multiple forms, e.g. dissemination of knowledge, provision of advice and solutions, co-design of tools and conduction of research. This shows that demo events can be composed of multiple activities depending on their objectives. They can be divided on two main characteristics scales:
- the number of participants: from less than 20 to more than 200 in relation with the global objectives, the location, the partnership and topic attractiveness.
- the degree of peer to peer learning: events could have the aim to maximise the exchanges between farmers with a high level of peer to peer learning or to maximise information and innovation uptake.
