In countries such as Turkey and Spain the uptake of OA
practices and techniques is still developing. Among
The need for initiatives that will focus on the
education of all Organic Agriculture (OA)
stakeholders has been identified on an EU level. The
issues that Organic.Mednet addresses need a
European-level and not a regional approach. The
collaboration of partners among countries with (i)
different experience in applying OA methods and
(ii) different expertise on the topics of the OA
training curriculum, illustrates the benefits from this
international approach that aims to transfer
knowledge and experience among partners. The
option of allowing candidate advisors to specialize
the generic Organic.Mednet training curriculum
according to the particular needs of the farmers in
their regions shows that linguistic and cultural
preferences will be also considered.
WHY IS IT NECESSARY?
Organic Agriculture is an increasingly important
part of the food and agriculture industries in
Europe. Public awareness on environmental issues,
as well as food safety and quality, have brought
forward OA as an agricultural approach that can not
only produce safer products but is environmentally
sound too. Due to the particularities of the
agricultural sector, it is difficult to promote the new
culture of sustainable agricultural production to its
stakeholders.
OBJECTIVES
others, the reasons for these countries lagging behind
can be found in the slow introduction of OA topics as a
priority of academic and vocational educational
systems of all levels that contribute to the education of
agricultural professionals. On the other hand, large
international organizations (FAO, IFOAM), as well as
non-profit associations such as the Soil Association in
UK, drive their own awareness and
education initiatives for the promotion
of OA in countries around the world. In
addition, there have been during the past
few years, several pilot actions that have
increased the production
of e-learning content
on OA theory, methods
methods and practices
(such as the EcoJob-AP project, the BIOAGRO eContent
project, the Organic.Edunet project, in which members
of this consortium have participated).
Such initiatives have various goals and are
implemented in different socio-cultural and linguistic
contexts. For instance, they may aim at promoting OA
and educating producers/farmers and consumers
about its benefits, or may focus on the training of
agricultural professionals about the theory, methods
and practices of OA. In several occasions they have
been proven successful, and they could be appropriate
candidates for transfer in new contexts and/or new
countries. In this direction, Organic.Mednet aims to use
existing results as a basis so that
it appropriately adapts, transfers
and validates them for
training new user
groups (such as
young and unemployed
agricultural professionals).
The overall aim of Organic.Mednet is to facilitate the
transfer of innovative training practices and e-
learning content to the case of vocational education
of young and unemployed agricultural
professionals, as well as to agricultural professionals
in new EU members
Validating the training needs previously
identified for training extension officers in the
Netherlands, Austria, Greece and Spain on topics
related to OA, in a new geographical context.
Selecting and analyzing innovative training
programmes and e-learning content that has
been previously developed.
Adapting and testing the integration of the
training programmes and e-learning content
Integrating the e-learning content in the national
and regional training systems and practices on
OA of the three targeted countries.
Adapting and enhancing the existing e-learning
content on OA in order to support the lifelong
learning needs of extension officers in the
participating user organizations.
To collect, categorize and publish in an online
learning repository the adapted e-learning
content transferred content from previous
initiatives in the form of digital training objects.
To deploy a multilingual online environment
(the Organic.Mednet Web Portal) that will
facilitate end-users’ online search, retrieval,
access and use of digital training objects in the
online learning repository.
To design a number of training scenarios that
will introduce the use of the transferred e-
learning content to support training of
agricultural professionals.
To carry out a set of focused pilot trials that will
compare the results from the transfer between
the source and the targeted countries, and will
validate the proposed training programme,
training scenarios, and the transferred e-learning
content.
CONSORTIUM MEMBERS

MORE INFORMATION

Organic.Mednet Project portal Developing the Skills of

http://www.organic-mednet.eu
Organic Agriculture
Contact person for the Mediterranean
Salvador Sánchez Alonso
salvador.sanchez@uah.es REF: ES-09-LLP-LdV-TOI-149061

Project Partners
University of Alcalá (Spain)
Technical University of Crete/Laboratory of
Distributed Multimedia Information Systems
and Application (Greece).
Stiching International Foundation for Sustainable
Agriculture Training (Netherlands).
Çukurova University (Turkey).
Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry,
Environment and Water Management (Austria)
Spanish Society for Organic Farming (Spain).
Inspection and Certification Organization of
Organic Products (Greece).
Prodague (Switzerland).
http://www.organic-mednet.eu