FAIRshare: Co-creating an online platform for the European farm advisory community to access and share digital advisory tools and services

The recent SCAR-AKIS policy brief on the Future of Farm Advisory Services (2017) recognises the opportunity for farm advisors to use new digital technologies and data flows to add value to their work through more open data exchange and digital services. It proposes the strengthening of those support systems which enable advisors to do their job more effectively; and improved connections for knowledge to be shared and developed further. The EU H2020 FAIRshare CSA project aims to enable a more digitally active farm and farm advisory community. As one aim of this project, a digital platform will be developed to collect and distribute information on digital tools and services used by advisors with a view to creating an inventory for the acquisition, exchange and dissemination of Digital Advisory Tools and Services (DATS). The overall goal is to firmly establish the sharing of digital tools, experience and motivation within the farm adviser community and the farmers they serve. This will include a multi-lingual, web-based semantic search tool, which itself takes digital solutions and tools for farmers and advisers as its core domain. The semantic tool will assist advisers in identifying best-matching digital tools and alternatives to address specific, user-defined farmer’s challenges expressed in ‘common search language’. This platform builds on components established in the VALERIE project (2017). It will incorporate a permanent networking facility which will allow ongoing user experience and testimonials of other advisors. The initial experience from the development of this tool and implications of this online platform will be discussed.