Title: Peer-to-peer Learning: Accessing Innovation through Demonstration
Funding source: EU Horizon 2020 project, grant agreement No. 727388.
Total funding: EUR 2 187 767,50
Funding for BSC: EUR 124 750,00
Implementation period: 01.01.2017.-30.06.2019.
Coordinator: James Hutton Institute (UK)
Latvian partner: Baltic Studies Centre
PLAID (Peer-to-peer Learning: Accessing Innovation through Demonstration) is an international research project (2017-2019) funded under the "Horizon 2020" Coordination and support action (CSA) funding scheme. It is coordinated by the James Hutton Institute (United Kingdom) with the participation of 12 partner organisations from 12 countries in Europe.
The project identifies, compiles and makes publically accessible the topics, locations, best practices and innovative approaches to demonstrations on commercial farms in the EU28, Switzerland and Norway. PLAID aims to enable access to demonstration activities by creating a searchable georeferenced inventory and map covering all 30 countries; developing ‘virtual’ (on-line) demonstration approaches with commercial farmers; assessing governance, commissioning, financing, topic selection, access (particularly gender), mediation techniques and impact in 24 longitudinal case studies; and comparing the impact of different governance models and financing mechanisms on learning processes and accessibility. PLAID has produced recommendations for governance and best practice in both real and virtual demonstration settings, using these to develop indicators and decision support tools for farmers, advisors, commercial companies, charities, educators, policymakers and researchers.
PLAID is a multi-actor consortium, using a multi-stakeholder approach, where farmers, industry stakeholders and academics work together as to design, test and validate outputs. PLAID has been designed to achieve high impact, through the generation of a substantial set of knowledge exchange activities and project outputs, which will be hosted long-term on PLAID stakeholder websites, YouTube and the EIP Agri Service Point. PLAID has initiated a community of practice, which together with the above activities and outputs provides a solid foundation for RUR-12-2017: “Networking European farms to boost thematic knowledge exchanges and close the innovation gap” and provides substantive input to the EIP Agri database.
- For more information please visit the project's website.
- See PLAID video presentation at (available also in Latvian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EW8OIPCYCGI)
- A blog entry by BSC.
- Publication building on the project's conceptual framework: Adamsone-Fiskovica, A., Tisenkopfs, T., Grivins, M. (2017) Formats, outcomes and impacts of knowledge exchange in demonstration activities. In: Proceedings of the XXVII European Society for Rural Sociology congress “Uneven processes of Rural Change: On Diversity, Knowledge and Justice”, pp. 160-161. Institute of Sociology, Jagiellonian University.
- Practice abstracts produced in the project (practice abstracts No. 16, 24, 41, 42 produced by BSC are also available in Latvian).
- BSC poster on agricultural demonstrations in Latvia.
- BSC poster on agricultural demonstrations in the Herbivore project being studied in Latvia (presented at the 13th European International Farming systems association (IFSA) Symposium on 1-5 July 2018 in Crete, Greece.
- The final extensive research reports on the two case studies of agricultural demonstrations carried out in Latvia are available here:
- Scientific publications based on the project's results with involvement of BSC researchers:
- Sutherland, L-A., Burton, R., Adamsone-Fiskovica, A., Hardy, C., Elzen, B., Debruyne, L., Flanigan, S. (2020) Inclusivity of On-farm Demonstration: Gender, age, and geographic location. The Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension. https://doi.org/10.1080/1389224X.2020.1828115
- Adamsone-Fiskovica, A., Grivins, M., Burton, R. J. F., Elzen, B., Flanigan, S., Frick, R., Hardy, C. (2021) Disentangling critical success factors and principles of on-farm agricultural demonstration events. The Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension. https://doi.org/10.1080/
1389224X.2020.1844768 - Adamsone-Fiskovica, A., Grivins, M. (2021, in press) Knowledge production and communication in on-farm demonstrations: putting farmer participatory research and extension into practice. The Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension. https://doi.org/10.1080/1389224X.2021.1953551
- Adamsone-Fiskovica, A. 2022. Social and technological potential of on-farm experiments and demonstrations to promote innovative farming practices. In: Maurel, V.B., Tremblay, N., Cook, S., Lacoste, M., Taylor, J. et al. Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Farmer-centric on-farm experimentation (OFE2021): Digital tools for a scalable transformative pathway. Oct 2021, Montpellier, France, pp. 62-66. https://nextcloud.inrae.fr/s/BDcebDdS9t69TWz