WP6 Governance, Good Practice Recommendations and Decision-support Tools

ISP will work with the leaders of WP2, WP3, WP4, WP5 (CRR, HUT, NAAS, DLO) to ensure that best practices are identified in each WP, with reference to the conceptual framework. The results from the WP 2 to 5 will be screened for policy and research programming relevant findings, and conclusions will be formulated on the basis of both scientific and stakeholder assessments. DLO will supplement these with a review of European policies impacting on demonstration, thus enabling policy recommendations to be made at European level.

Specific questions include:

• How do national and European policy measures impact on the governance, commissioning, topic selection, access and mediation techniques of on-farm demonstration in different contexts?
• Who commissions and funds what types of demonstration? What opportunities and gaps are present in relation to topical and geographical coverage? What is the role of the Farm Advisory Services (FAS)?
• What approaches increase access for women, farm employees, participants of different ages and farming types?
• What are the geographical differences in access to demonstration on a variety of topics?
• What are the indicators of positive impact?
• What potential policy supports or alterations to existing could increase access and quality of demonstration activities? Resultant recommendations will reflect the diversity of demonstration activities between different agricultural sectors, nationalities, and commissioning types.

ISP will lead a process of developing indicators from T6.1 to develop targeted decision-support tools. These tools will provide interactive questions and checklists for issues to consider when commissioning and planning a demonstration event. Contents are expected to include:

• Identifying objectives for demonstration
• How to budget for demonstration activities (including budget templates)
• Criteria for farm selection
• Approaches to advertising and recruitment
• Ensuring accessibility to target groups, particularly women
• Options for mediation techniques
• Production and dissemination of audio-visual material
• Methods of measuring impact (including participant feedback questionnaire templates).

As some issues are more relevant to some types of commissioning agent than others, targeted decision-support tools will be created for farmers, advisory services, commercial companies, charities and research and higher education institutes.

Decision-support tools will be made available in pdf form as a set of checklists, and on-line as an interactive set of questions, with downloadable templates.

Outputs from T6.1 and 6.2 will be further refined and validated through the following mechanisms:

• Each consortium member team will consult with their NSCG
• HUT will organise a collaborative 'Recommendations Workshop' with case study leads (WP5), selected virtual demonstration farmers (WP4), IAB, AgriDemoF2F, RUR-12-2017 and consortium members
• Presentation and discussion at the PLAID Final Conference (see T7.3)

ACTA will work with ISP to formulate overall policy recommendations into a summary report and short 'Policy briefs' available in selected languages.