# Rethinking the Dimensions of Farm Advice

Pierre Labarthe, Lee-ann Sutherland, Christina Noble, Héloïse Leloup

► To cite this version:

Pierre Labarthe, Lee-ann Sutherland, Christina Noble, Héloïse Leloup. Rethinking the Dimensions of Farm Advice. EuroChoices, 2022, 21 (1), pp.3-4. 10.1111/1746-692X.12346. hal-04054022

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Submitted on 31 Mar 2023

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Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Rethinking the Dimensions of
Farm Advice

Repenser les dimensions du
conseil agricole

Die Dimensionen der
landwirtschaftlichen Beratung
noch einmal neu denken

Pierre Labarthe,
Lee-Ann Sutherland,
Christina Noble and
Heloise LeLoup

Agriculture and rural areas are central to the policy objectives of the European Green Deal. The new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) encourages farmers and other actors to step up their efforts to enable and accelerate the necessary transition to a fair, healthy and environmentally-friendly food system by 2030. The new CAP contains a number of policy reforms to support this transition including a new cross-cutting objective that calls for the intensification of knowledge exchange and the speeding-up of innovation in order to help farmers, foresters and other rural businesses to meet the

growing economic, environmental
and social challenges they face.
Functional and effective farm advisory
services are a central element of this
objective. All farm advisors are not
only expected to play a key role in
sharing new knowledge and ideas
with farmers, foresters and other rural
businesses, but also to engage much
more directly with the co-creation,
dissemination and embedding of
innovation.

This Special Issue presents findings
from the H2020 research project
AgriLink (Agricultural Knowledge:
Linking farmers, advisors and
researchers to boost innovation). The
aim of AgriLink (2017–2021) was
(a) to better understand the role of
advisory services in farmers’
decisions regarding various

innovation areas (technological,
process, marketing and social); and
(b) thereby enhance the contribution
of farm advice to the sustainable
development of European
agriculture. The project was
implemented in a specific policy
context that was greatly influenced
by i) the transition to the post-2020
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)
and the obligations upon EU Member
States to ‘more deeply integrate all
advisers’ within their strengthened
Agricultural Knowledge and
Innovation Systems (AKISs) (see
Labarthe and Beck), and ii) the high
expectations of the European
Commission for H2020 projects to
make tangible contributions to this
process.

“AgriLink hat es möglich gemacht, die Definition und die Ideen der landwirtschaftlichen Beratung zu überdenken.”

“AgriLink a permis de repenser la définition même et les conceptions du conseil agricole.”

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The AgriLink consortium gathered researchers, innovation brokers and advisors working for public, private and farmer-based organisa-
tions. This multi-actor dimension was key to fine-tuning dissemination activities with the agenda of policymakers and of the wider farm
advisory community.

© 2022 The Authors. *EuroChoices* published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Agricultural Economics Society and European Association of Agricultural Economists.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use,
distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

DOI: 10.1111/1746-692X.12346
AgriLink made it possible to rethink the very definition and conceptions of farm advice. In so doing, our ambition was to support a renewed understanding of farm advice, starting from farmers' perspectives. Our project had three main achievements:

1. New insights into the role of advice in farmers' decision-making on innovation adoption, based on our concept of microAKIS, that is knowledge systems that farmers personally assemble, including the range of individuals and organisations from whom they seek services and with whom they exchange knowledge.

2. A new perspective on the diversity of suppliers, with a focus on 'independent' versus 'linked' suppliers and how they contribute to hidden changes in AKIS, for instance through the back-office of farm advice.

3. Practical insights about where co-design methods can be applied to enhance the contribution of advice to achieving sustainability issues.

In this context, the aim of this Special Issue is to disseminate key findings of our work and thus contribute to evidence-based advisory policies that best fit the conditions for the sustainable development of agriculture. The first set of articles critically assess European farm advisory policies (Labarthe and Beck) in a context of increased pluralism of suppliers (see Sutherland and Labarthe, with a focus on 'independent' vs. 'linked' suppliers). The second set address the role of participatory methods in the design of advisory policies in this context (Potters et al. and Leloup et al., on Living Labs and Transition Scenario workshops, respectively). A third set

of papers presents findings about the transformations of farmers' needs and practices (and how they are met or not by advisory services), based on our concept of microAKIS (see the

> AgriLink made it possible to rethink the very definition and conceptions of farm advice.

Parlons Graphiques by Madureira et al. for illustrations). These articles rely on evidence from field work implemented in 13 countries (Belgium, Czechia, France, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain and the UK). More than 1,000 farmers were

interviewed, making this the largest dataset on the relations of farmers to advisors recently collected in Europe. Articles highlight the microAKIS of different social categories with specific profiles: career changers (Zabko and Tisenkopfs), farm workers (Laurent and Nguyen) and droppers of innovation (Sutherland et al.). Overall, we argue that there is a need to learn from hard-to-reach farmers and workers and deploy innovative public policies and actors to engage with them (see the Point de Vue by Labarthe et al.). As a whole, the papers demonstrate the critical importance of making better use of advances in social sciences to advance policy design, particularly understanding the role of advice within social interactions, and to strengthen the inclusiveness of public policies dealing with farm advisory services.

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Functional and effective farm advisory services are central to achieving the objectives in the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) that calls for the intensification of knowledge exchange and the speeding-up of innovation in order to help farmers and other actors meet growing economic, environmental and social challenges.

Pierre Labarthe, Directeur de recherche, INRAE, France.

Email: pierre.labarthe@inrae.fr

Lee-Ann Sutherland, Director of International Land Use Study Centre, The James Hutton Institute, Aberdeen, Scotland.

Email: lee-ann.sutherland@hutton.ac.uk

Christina Noble, Social Scientist, The James Hutton Institute, Aberdeen, Scotland.

Email: christina.noble@hutton.ac.uk

Héloïse LeLoup, Post-doctoral researcher, INRAE, France.

Email: beloïse-marie.leloup@inrae.fr