Who are Advisory Services Leaving Out? A Critical Reflection on ‘Hard to Reach’ Farmers

Although the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union has broadened its objectives to integrate social issues, several hard-to-reach groups of farmers and workers continue to be ignored by advisory services and associated policies. Connecting with these groups has a strong potential to increase the economic and social cohesion of European agricultures. We interviewed over 1,000 farmers across Europe and identified features of these groups that are often overlooked by advisory services. We critically reflected on the social cohorts omitted from advisory services and how they could be better reached; they include farm labourers, new entrants or ‘career changers’, and later adopters. We clarify the different types of advisors in the advisory landscape, distinguishing between those who are linked to or independent from sales of inputs or technologies. We make concrete recommendations about how to engage advisors with hard-to-reach groups, with approaches suited to different national contexts of Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS); thus contributing to the ‘AKIS dimension of National Strategic Plans of the next Common Agricultural Policy, 2023–2027. We argue for the more effective use of advances in the social sciences through a better understanding of advice as social interaction which can bolster the inclusiveness of public policies.     

New Entrants Need Tailored Farm Advice

Supporting new entrants in farming is an increasingly important political and practical issue in European agriculture. This article looks at a specific group of new entrants – career changers – who move into agriculture from other occupational and educational backgrounds. As they bridge several worlds, they are often important innovators. One of the main challenges encountered by this group is the lack of tailored advice and insufficient capacity of the existing agricultural advisory services to respond to their specific innovation needs. The article examines how career changers use the knowledge from their background and access new knowledge on agriculture. The research is based on biographical interviews with individuals who have changed their careers and in-depth interviews with advisors in Latvia. The results suggest that the gap between knowledge needs and knowledge services is being filled through the creation of professional networks by new entrants with each other and with industry experts and customers and to a lesser degree with formal advisory services. We discuss how in this situation various actors in the EU’s agricultural knowledge and innovation system (AKIS) may better help the career changers to professionalise in farming and undertake sustainability-oriented innovations.