The exports of agricultural products within the EU, earned European farmers a total of 90 billion euros, while the average increase in the income produced by agricultural activities reached 12.3%, in 2010. At the same time, however, agriculture in Greece, faced a 4.3% drop in its produced agricultural income within the same period and the agricultural sector in Greece is now shrinking by a 4% rate annually (Eurostat). EU farm incomes rose by 6.7% compared to 2010 (Eurostat) and agricultural output value at basic prices increased by 4.3% (Agriculture in EU: Statistical and Economic Report 2010). This shows that Greek farmers are not taking advantage of the European market environment.
No more lost opportunities for farmers!
The EU-27 agricultural income is expected to be 17.5% higher in 2022, compared to the average income between 2008-2012 (Prospects for Agricultural Markets and Income in the EU 2012-2022, European Commission, 2012). Effective agro-entrepreneurial activities can allow farmers to become more competitive and capitalize on the current growing economy. This way they can achieve higher incomes at a period of financial distress and create a stronger European market.
At a period with very limited jobs, agriculture can be a way out of unemployment, by offering green jobs. More importantly, those new opportunities, if combined with entrepreneurship approaches and practices that take effectiveness and efficiency into account, can become a source of high incomes for farmers esp;ecially when considering that the EU27 real agricultural income per worker has increased by 1.0% in 2012, after an increase of 8.0% in 2011.
To this end, the farmsUP! project will encourage farmers to think more as entrepreneurs, by strengthening their entrepreneurial skills and competencies through taking advantage of the training and educational material from 22 EU Lifelong Learning Programme projects. In the project’s dynamic vortal, a gamification and a smart "truck search" will allow farmers to identify the best projects for their needs.
farmsUP! comes to bring you up! 4 workshops will take place in Aliarntos (17/5/2013), Kontariotisa (10/6/2013), Serres (12/6/2013) and Skala (5/7/2013) and our European conference in Nafplio in October 2013, will offer farmers all the necessary knowledge and material to help make them better entrepreneurs.
The 22 carefully selected "projects" will urge farmers to capitalize on the already existing material, which has been previously developed and implemented, in order to eventually become better entrepreneurs. These projects directly address to the farmers’ needs to acquire knowledge and know-how on ways to brand and market their top quality products, get the recognition they deserve, increase their sales and as a consequence earn higher profits, simply by starting to think more as entrepreneurs.
Plant the seed of entrepreneurship!