Results of ‘Exchange Schemes for Young Farmers’ presented at the Young Farmers 2015 conference

The European Commission, Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development (DG AGRI), presented during the conference ‘knowledge for young farmers’ the preliminary results of the pilot project ‘Exchange Schemes for Young Farmers’. This study has been conducted by Ecorys, LEI-Wageningen UR and Aequator Groen & Ruimte. On 15-16 October 2015, DG AGRI welcomed 165 young farmers, young farmers associations, policy makers, exchange schemes and EU institutions at the conference, which was organised by Ecorys.

The MEP Mairead McGuinness said that she was pleased to see such a solid research on the needs of young farmers and that the country reports are a rich source of information. The Deputy Director-General Mihail Dumitru of DG AGRI and Director of DG AGRI Aldo Longo indicated that it is the first time that young farmers and exchange scheme managers were together. Also young farmers welcomed very much that profound research had been done on their needs.

Objectives

At the conference the results of the three parts of the study were presented:

Needs of young farmers (under 40 years). Based on interviews with 2205 young farmers throughout Europe, an overall report and 28 country reports have been drafted. Among others one can see that exchange schemes are considered very useful by participants, but only 17% of the young farmers are aware that the exchange scheme exists.
185 exchange schemes had been identified in EU and some countries outside EU. They had been clustered towards 8 types, e.g. classic exchange schemes, group exchanges, web-based exchanges.
A Guide for successful exchange schemes had been launched with tips and hints on how to start up or improve an exchange scheme.

The final reports are available in 2015 at the DG AGRI website and ENRD website. The programme in which are also the main results included can be found here. The mainstreaming can be followed here.

Please find the full breakdown here