Young Entrepreneurs in Aquaponics – High Five! Erasmus Project

Project Title

Young Entrepreneurs in Aquaponics – High Five!

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 youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy) ; Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education

Project Summary

There are more than 70.000 species of medicinal plants on the surface of the world. Most of them grow in their habitat. Because of urbanization, air pollution, water pollution, and global warming, the natural habitat of those plants has been decreasing day by day. However, those plants are valuable in terms of marketing. The drug companies buy those plants in order to produce some medicinal products. This situation offers an opportunity for the young farmers in Europe. They can grow those plant species in cultivated areas and sell them to drug companies.
Aquaponic farming is a combination of soilless plant growing and fish farming and is gaining significant popularity all over the globe. Aquaponics farming system is a significantly important way to grow food in the space limited, climatically vulnerable, and deteriorated soil conditions. The aquaponic system offers a significant potential to improve plant growth, food production, food sovereignty, and food security on a sustainable basis. While lack of knowledge and proper understanding about the right implementation of aquaponics techniques and strategies are major limiting factors for aquaponic farming. AA good understanding of aquaponic can be helpful to improve community-based food production in the urban areas, industrial-scale food production in the rural areas, and smaller level farming operations in the developing and underdeveloped countries.
There were two pieces of training within the scope of YEAH; the first one is in the city of Novo Mesto in Slovenia; “Agricultural Entrepreneurship Training” was held on 20-25 October 2019. A total of 17 young people including six young farmers from Slovenia and Turkey, 5 young farmers from Greece participated in this training. During training Aquaponic systems in Slovenia were also visited.
At the end of our 5-day training, our participants explored and learned;
– The difference between entrepreneurship and agricultural entrepreneurship,
– Various agricultural terminologies,
– The opportunities and advantages offered by agriculture,
– How to work collaboratively with young farmers from different countries,
– How to market their agricultural products abroad using various online tools,
– How various agricultural products are planted throughout the year without being dependent on climate change through the Aquaponic systems they have examined in Slovenia,
The Soilless Farming Training through Aquaponics Systems Course 07.12.2020-11.12.2020 via Zoom Platform
The training “The Soilless Farming Training through Aquaponics Systems ” was intended to be implemented in Van city however because of Covid-19 we had to launch it online. Fortunately thanks to the online training we could reach 104 young people from Mozambique to Mexico. It can be said that from Turkey the wave of Aquaponics has inspired all youngsters who were keen to learn this.
The aim of the training is starting from the general flow of aquaponics systems, comprehending the importance and the market value of organic products free from chemicals and pesticide residues, the techniques of producing agricultural products in every season through aquaponics systems without effects from climate conditions, exploring the market value of the product they harvest not only inside but also outside of the country. All training materials were uploaded to our project website (http://www.yeah-project.com/en/Training.aspx?id=3 ).
Within the scope of YEAH 3 different intellectual outputs have been created. Each of our intellectual outputs is unique in the field of agriculture. The first IO of our project is the Design of An innovative Aquaponics Systems for the Climate Condition of Van City. This IO is a quite innovative way of aquaponics systems solutions for the climate of Van city as every geographic region has its own conditions.
The second one is DiDaMeP (Digital Database of Medicinal Plants) is a real solution for Europe in the meaning of digital database for medicinal plants. In turkey there is no such database and there are only very few in the world. So, this intellectual output is very innovative and a must for Europe. The third one is the combination three-chapter is a book of Agricultural Entrepreneurship, Aquaponic System in Soilless and of Effective Fishery Techniques For Aquaponics Systems. This book discusses; permanent solution for entrepreneurship in terms of agriculture, some aquaponics systems’ architecture and structure according to the needs of the partner countries in detail, and fishery techniques for aquaponics systems. Young people and organizations from all over the world have benefitted from our project and its outcomes.
As a result of online dissemination and multiplier event activities there were a lot of young people who explored aquaponic systems and new ways of agricultural entrepreneurship

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 139807,25 Eur

Project Coordinator

Van Valiligi & Country: TR

Project Partners

• YUZUNCU YIL UNIVERSITESI
• Van İl Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü
• LandIng Aquaculture BV
• INSTITUTE OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT
• Visoka sola za upravljanje podezelja Grm Novo mesto