The farmer's toolbox for climate change mitigation (FarmBox)

Around 22.2 million people work regularly in agriculture, but the farming sector needs to attract a new generation of farmers with the necessary skills to live and work in a challenging context. They will have to produce more efficiently while protecting the environment; contribute to the fight against climate change; meet society’s demands regarding healthy and balanced diets; and keep up with increasingly rapid scientific and technological progress.

It is therefore essential that future farmers benefit from adequate agricultural education and training and acquire the various skills needed to adapt to a changing environment.

The FarmBox project aims to develop:

1. a MOOC (Massive Online Open Course) about Climate Smart Agriculture – CSA – to provide key information about CSA and to present learners some useful practices in order to improve land management in terms of biodiversity principles and climate change adaptation needs

2.  an online Simulator that will allow learners, small farmers and farmholders to simulate in a virtual environment the benefits on a given area of the implementation of CSA measures presented in the MOOC.

Accessing to the MOOC and the Simulator, it is expected to enhance trainers’ capacity to create innovative farming knowledge, approaches and practices, through the use of critical climate scenarios (scenario-based approach) and increase in this way students and farmers’ competences on climate change adaption practices (soil and water management, climate resilient crops etc.). The use of open digital practices will improve trainers and users’ confidence and usability of digital tools, especially in agriculture and in agricultural education, and will facilitate the spread of open information on the topic, by creating a transnational knowledge community.

See the project brochure here.