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“Farm-Success” Project
Training farmers for sustainable succession processes
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Content
- Farm Succession Best Practice Case Studies
- 3rd Project Meeting, Rome, Italy
- 4th Project Meeting, Naklo, Slovenia
- In Brief: The Family Farming Knowledge Platform
- Other Relevant Webpages
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Farm succession best practice case studies
Recently, the Farm-Success project partners have been gathering case studies from their countries as examples of best practices related to succession processes in European family farms.
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CASE STUDY 1
Pr'Martinovh Farm, Slovenia
The Pr'Martinovh farm is a 26 hectare farm with livestock breeding (cattle, chicken, pigs and rabbits) as well as dairy and meat processing units, and an agrotourism business. The farm has three full time employees – the oldest daughter Urša (successor), father Žan (predeccessor) and his wife Marta. The predecessor suggested transferring the farm to his oldest daughter to ensure that the farm continues to exist, and to gain funding from the CAP/RDP measure for young farmers. The main changes after succession were conversion to organic farming, an established slaughterhouse with a meat processing unit and an established milk processing unit. The successors’ advice to others is, “Before the succession process you must have a clear vision and goals for what you want to do with the farm”.
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CASE STUDY 2
KUNCLŮV MLÝN Farm, Czech Republic
The KUNCLŮV MLÝN farm has been in the family for 300 years. Today, Petr Kuncl with his family use it for organic cattle breeding, meat processing, and other attractive activities, such as horse breeding, farm sale, summer camps for children, organizing traditional rural festivals. Petr’s parents were very active on the farm even before the hand-over, but since the successful succession, even more changes and innovations have been made - the farm has been enlarged from 45 to 100 hectares, new buildings have been added and the number of animals on the farm has increased significantly.
Petr who started preparing to take over his parents’ farm since childhood by participating in managing the farm and studying agriculture, hotel school and artistic blacksmithing, was able to make innovations and buy new technology, also thanks to programs designed for young farmers. He thinks success of the succession depends on relationships in the family, as well as the willingness of the young farmer to take over the responsibility, communicate about any controversial issues before the succession and have a clear vision about the future.
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CASE STUDY 3
Dairy and cattle farm, Germany
The dairy and cattle farm was established by the predecessor and developed from originally 12 dairy cows and eight hectares of farmland. Today the farm has 120 hectares of arable farming and grassland management and 45-50 cows and their offspring. Their daughter and son-in-law started working at the farm in 2008, and in 2011 an operational company was established. Today three generations of the family live at the farm. After a personally challenging period, in 2016 the succession was decided and the young couple have planned to leave the farm and build their own agricultural enterprise elsewhere and appreciate the performance of the predecessor generation. The entrepreneurs are now planning the next development steps towards tourism in rural areas. The successor’s advice to other young farmers in the succession phase is: “Open up and remain with great clarity in conversation with the predecessor! Enter different angles of the situation – this can lead to understanding for others. Do not consider yourself as too important, but be stubborn!”.
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CASE STUDY 4
Segureña sheep farm, Spain
Antonio is an example of a succession in a transhumance sheep farm of the highly valued Segureña breed. Since childhood, Antonio’s father transmitted to him the values and knowledge of the farm and to be a shepherd. Although his brothers help him occasionally, he is the only one who decided to dedicate his life to this activity, and he is now supported by his father and family. The succession process was been satisfactory for all parties, and since then Antonio has innovated the selection for the improvement of his sheep in terms of fertility, prolificacy and capacity of fattening. The improvements are such that other breeders now buy his lambs to make their replacements. Antonio is an example of a successful successor and is now an expert and leader of various collective initiatives. His advice is: “We always have to strive to get something more”.
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CASE STUDY 5
Extra virgin olive oil farm, Italy
The extra-virgin olive oil family farm was handed over to Maria from her mother when Maria was ready to take the reins of the company. Her mother retired at this time and therefore the succession progress was not traumatic as both parties were in agreement. Before the succession process the farm was mostly based on the production of quality extra-virgin olive oil, however after Maria succeeded her mother she expanded the farm into agritourism and blackberries, improved the quality of oil production, and shortened the local dairy supply chain with traditional cheese production. The farm now has organic food certification. Maria’s advice to other young farmers is: “it is important to plan a road map including your vision and realize at least partly your dreams, even if you have to know that not all you need can be realized”.
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3rd Project Meeting in Rome, Italy
The third Farm-Success transnational meeting was held in Rome, Italy on the 15th and 16th September 2016. To commence the first day of the meeting, an overview of the project progress so far was given. After this, the selection of best practices results were presented from Germany, Spain, Italy, Slovenia and the Czech Republic. The project partners considered all best practice results in order to identify potential case studies. In the afternoon session the project management and reporting were discussed along with the project dissemination and exploitation strategies, specifically how these could be improved.
The second day of the meeting was for the most part dedicated to the selection of best practices as case studies from each country. Here, project partners first deliberated on what basis was a best practice deemed a good case study, then chose case studies from each country. In addition the project partners discussed how the open-ended interviews for the case-studies would be conducted in the following months. The final item of the meeting was the project monitoring and meeting evaluation.
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4th Project Meeting in Naklo, Slovenia
The fourth Farm-Success transnational meeting was held in Naklo, Slovenia on the 9-10th March 2017. The first day of the meeting commenced with an overview of the project work completed recently, followed by a presentation of the case studies. The remainder of the morning session was spent discussing the project management and reporting as well as the development of the structure and contents of the training modules. In the afternoon, project partners were presented with the outline of the serious game and how users would advance through the game in order to facilitate their understanding of good decision-making in farm succession processes. To conclude the first day, the project dissemination and exploitation strategy and progress was also presented to partners. On the second day of the meeting in Naklo, the project monitoring and evaluation were deliberated and evaluated, before partners made their last remarks on the upcoming work to be completed before the next project meeting in September 2017.
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In Brief: the Family Farming Knowledge Platform
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The FAO Family Farming Knowledge Platform
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Family Farming Knowledge Platform is an online platform that compiles information on family farming from all over the world, such as national regulations, public policies, best practices, data and statistics, recent research findings, as well as articles and publications. In this way, the Family Farming Knowledge Platform provides a single access point for local, regional, national and international information related to family farming issues.
As the Farm-Success project tackles a family farming issue, namely the challenges of farm succession, the Farm-Success project’s activities have been documented as Resources on the platform. Here you can find information about the Farm-Success Project’s outputs, such as the Summary Report, as well as the progress of the project through the Farm-Success transnational meetings. Each Farm-Success Resource on the platform includes a link to where more detailed information on the topic can be found. To view the Farm-Success project Resources on the platform, just search ‘Farm-Success’ in the Resource search toolbar.
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