Training rural farmers in the use of mobile applications for agricultural activities Erasmus Project

Project Title

Training rural farmers in the use of mobile applications for agricultural activities

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Agriculture, forestry and fisheries; Rural development and urbanisation

Project Summary

The project is part of a context in which the rural world in general and farmers in particular feel the need to access ICT tools to improve the management of their work and not to lose the ground of an increasingly digitized market. ICT and mobile applications are almost never present in the annual plans of the training organizations for Farmers. Smart Rural wanted to emphasize the importance of changing this situation and demonstrated that ICT training can help to speed up the process of rural farm modernization and farmer day-to-day management.

In this context, Smart Rural has created a training programme on the use of ICT applications for mobile devices for an adult farmer audience, with the aim of promoting their access to digital innovations and demonstrating that ICTs can improve the work and inclusion conditions.

This work has been reinforced by transnational cooperation, which has added value to the achievement of the project objectives. Moreover, the project has shown that it is mainly thanks to this cooperation that it has been possible to establish a coherent and quality training plan, based on the experiences of the partners and their know-how.
This cooperation was conducted by 5 transnational partners. Four of these organizations work directly with farmers by organizing training actions throughout the year; the fifth partner is a firm specializing in the communication and management of European projects, which worked mainly for dissemination and communication actions. Here is the list:

• France (Dordogne Chamber of Agriculture), Project Coordinator
• Austria (BEST Institute GmBH),
• Ireland (Cork Institute of Technology)
• Spain (Instituto Navarro de Tecnologías and Infraestructuras Agroalimentarias S.A) and Desarrollo de Estrategias Exteriores (DEX)

Smart Rural has been structured around three main activities (in addition to the administrative and financial management of the project). The first one was the completion of a Transnational Study of Identified Barriers and Demands of Rural Farmers to Use Mobile Applications. Based on this study, the second action was the development of a Transnational Training Programme for this target audience in rural areas and the conduct of training courses. Finally, the third major work-line was the communication of the project, its results and the support of the EU through the Erasmus + Programme.

The main result of the project is in line with its objectives: the farmers with whom we tested this project are now aware that ICTs are not something that does not affect them; On the contrary, they understood that mobile applications are tools for managing their daily lives, that they increase productivity, save time and promote access to new working methods and better connection with the world. On the side of the organizations, the project had a significant impact: all of them integrated into their usual training plans for farmers the thematic of ICT and the use of mobile applications.

Farmers have been able to break the fear (or mistrust) of the ICT world by having mobile applications that help manage their work and make it much more efficient.
In the long term, we believe that the dissemination of the results of this transnational experience will encourage other training organizations to include in the Farmers’ Action Plans the training of the “Smart Rural” theme.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 412137,52 Eur

Project Coordinator

CHAMBRE DEPARTEMENTAL D AGRICULTUREDE LA DORDOGNE & Country: FR

Project Partners

• INSTITUTO NAVARRO DE TECNOLOGIAS E INFRAESTRUCTURAS AGROALIMENTARIAS SA
• DESARROLLO DE ESTRATEGIAS EXTERIORES SA
• BEST INSTITUT FUR BERUFSBEZOGENE WEITERBILDUNG UND PERSONALTRAINING GMBH
• CORK INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY