3rd Transnational Meeting in Rome, Italy

Rome was the venue of the 3rd transnational Meeting for the Farm – Success project. The Representatives of the eight project partners met at the 15th  and 16th  of September in the Italian capital.  Matteo Ansanelli and Massimo Canalicchio welcomed the participants. After a brief overview of the current project status, they discussed the selection of the best practices for further Case Studies.

Therefore farmers were presented, who already went through farm succession and have answered a simple questionnaire, which was divided into three parts: information about the successor, the farm and the succession process. One of the key purposes of the Farm – Success project is creating an educational program. This educational program should help farmers mastering farm succession at his/her family farm.

Some preliminary results were received, such as: 

• Spanish farmers manage their farm usually for three generations
• Slovenian farmers discuss succession in an early age (15 – 20 years of the successor)
• Czech farmers perceive the succession process as a success by 80 – 100 %

In the afternoon the project partners discussed the management of the project, as well as the project dissemination via facebook and twitter. Improvement of the dissemination via Internet was mentioned. Keeping record of the activities linked to the project to get the project more disseminated.

On the second day of the meeting in a further discussion the suitable candidates for the project were selected out of the already introduced candidates. Here the decisive criteria for an interview were clarified. The willingness of farmers to participate in further surveys was most important. In addition, aspects such as the age, sex or the multifunctional activities should be decisive selection criteria. Additionally the participants decided, that the question of the number of siblings should be included while the next revision of the questionnaire. With the selected candidates open ended interviews will be conducted in the following months.

Afterwards the representatives of the European project partners visited the farm of Benjamin Tiozza. This farm is run by several generations simultaneously. The farm is involved in a Farm Network BASF Partnership, which supports sustainable development, biodiversity and innovation.  Although the succession process has been a challenge, it was ultimately successful. Benjamin Tiozza mentioned that the most important factor at succession is a family, which has a good cooperation, family tradition, values and own products.

The next meeting of the project group will be conducted at NAKLO organization in Slovenia in March 2017.