More features, usability and languages: EU-FarmBook continues to grow
The EU-FarmBook partners met in Maastricht for their third Consortium Meeting to share information and to decide on the next steps. The aim is to create the best possible digital platform to provide a service and to help shape a better and more sustainable future for Europe’s rural areas.
November 2024 The partners meet from November 5 – 7 for their third in-person meeting in Maastricht, Netherlands. Over three days, discussions and exercises focused on how to further enhance the usability of the platform for the European agricultural and forestry sectors. Since November, the user interface has been available in a total of 24 European languages. This is an important milestone for user-friendliness that ensures easy access and motivates project coordinators and partners from Multi-Actor H2020 and Horizon Europe projects as well as EIP-AGRI Operational Groups to contribute by uploading practice-oriented materials to EU-FarmBook.
Pieter Spanoghe, EU-FarmBook Coordinator, thanked the technical team for the work they have done. Their efforts in designing the platform enable easy and convenient uploading and use. EU-FarmBook is not only a research project. “We are a service-oriented project that wants to serve the agricultural world,” said Pieter Spanoghe.
Future technical features of EU-FarmBook
The EU-FarmBook technical team, brought screens and designs showing the potential features of the platform improvements. Software engineers Hans Bosman and Wouter Vandersyppe explained that the consortium meeting is a good opportunity to gather feedback before building the features.
Laurens van der Cruyssen and Adrian Hill, both experts in user research, confirmed the importance of all consortium members working together to weigh up the usefulness and acceptance of new features to provide the best service to EU-FarmBook contributors.
A Europe-made AI, as Daan Di Scala and Mike Wilmer pointed out, will complement the service offered on EU-FarmBook. They are working on various tools to share knowledge and create a good experience for users. An AI-powered chatbot will assist and interact with users from different backgrounds. The AI technology used is exclusively European and the answers are based on contributions from the EU-FarmBook database itself, said Di Scala.
EU-FarmBook ambassadors to strengthen the knowledge flow in agriculture and forestry
Since the platform’s pre-launch in February 2024, the number of contributions has steadily increased. “It is amazing how the number of project contributions have increased in the past three months, and this is only the beginning,” said Lisa van Dijk, demonstrating the upward trend in the EU-FarmBook upload analytics. The work of the EU-FarmBook ambassadors has been crucial to this success. They have supported, and will continue to support, acoordinators of European Multi-Actor Horizon Projects and EIP-AGRI Operational Groups in their regions on how to share their results with others all across Europe. “Finding and collecting the better-quality results of the Operational Groups will be challenging”, explained Mark Redman “but we are confident of support from the National CAP Networks that are established in each Member State”.
“We are constantly growing and happy to show our presence,” added Inês Assunção from the EU-FarmBook Communication team. The team regularly shares news on their channels, promotes interesting projects through short videos, and provides educational videos and training sessions on YouTube about contributing to the platform.
Agricultural journalists and media also play a crucial role in communicating EU-FarmBook to the agricultural world. In her keynote speech with the title “How can EU-FarmBook support farmers?” Katharina Seuser, focused on the EU farmers. A major challenge is the diversity of this target group with many different types of farms, regional differences and different needs for information, she says. EU-FarmBook, as a central source of information for farmers is designed to support farmers with the challenges of the green transition of agriculture. The creation of this unique project should be publicized early and regularly: “We should report on our work in order to raise awareness among stakeholders”, Katharina Seuser said, “Today it’s not about presenting a finished project, but about reporting on our efforts.” The international cooperation involving 29 partners with diverse expertise offers material for many stories that could attract the interest of the press. This advertising would reach all important target groups, farmers included.
“We are building something exceptional”, said Pieter Spanoghe. All the exercises and workshops held during the Consortium meeting helped to plan future steps and to improve the platform. “Together we are working on the planned launch in 2025, where EU-FarmBook will present itself to Europe”, Pieter Spanoghe resumed and thanks all project partners for their participation.
