Are you an educator interested in curriculum development?
Are you involved in digital farming? 

On the 24th and 25th of February 2020, the SEED project will land in Pamplona, Spain for the second International peer-review event. The object of the peer-review will be to review and evaluate the SEED curriculum that project partners are currently developing. We invite experts in digital farming and educators with expertise in curriculum design to join the project meeting in Spain and contribute to the validation of the SEED draft curriculum.

Participants will spend 2 days in wonderful Navarra, take part in groupwork, peer review activities and a technical visit that will help project partners to improve the quality of the intellectual products the project is developing.

The project will cover the costs of travel, accommodation and subsistence during your stay in Pamplona. Participants are expected to travel on the 23rd and leave on the either 25th late afternoon/evening or 26th. If you have questions, contact Luca Pagliaricci of EGInA, the project partner in charge of organizing the event (email: [email protected], Telephone +393288746046).

The students were informed by Susana Otazu and Sonia Mendoza, from the training department of AIN, of the opportunities for international mobility and internship in hosting companies from the countries of the project partners. The students were studying “Landscape and Rural Environment” (EQF 5) and “Forestry and Natural Environment Management” (EQF 5).

The internships will take place in ICT companies, agricultural companies or research centers and universities in three countries (Italy, Slovakia and Belgium) where trainees will have the chance of participating in different ongoing projects related to the digitalization of farms, research projects on digital farming, supporting research teams and in the analysis of needs and elaboration of a digital transformation strategic plans.

An internal tutor from each hosting company will be assigned to each trainee. This will allow trainees to put into practice their digital farming knowledge and skills in a work based learning (WBL) environment. The students were very interested in the opportunity and some of them expressed their desire of participating in the mobility.

On Friday, October 11, 2019 in Liptovske Revuce experts from the Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra took part in the conference “Rural Woman – Leader 2019”.

The conference was organized by Rural Parliament in Slovakia. The Rural Parliament in Slovakia was established in 2000 as an informal platform for rural initiatives. Its mission is to promote the improvement of the quality of life in rural areas and to support rural initiatives in the management of rural development.

During their presentation, Zuzana Palkova and Marieta Okenkova introdiced the ideas and main outcomes of the SEED project. The auditorium – farmers and representatives of the companies involved in the food processing – have been informed about the oportunity to hosting the students from Italy, Spain and Belgium thanks to international internship realized in the frame of SEED project activities.

What role do drones play in the precision agriculture of the future?

The first applications indicate it is important that drone pilots, IT workers and agronomists are working together. (source image: VILT).

In Flanders, the EUKA, the Flemish drone cluster provides an overview of the main sectors where drones are being used, such as construction, surveillance, agriculture, technology, logistics, government and leisure.

EUKA was recognized by the Flemish Agency for Innovation and Entrepreneurship as an Innovative Business Network so that it can help this new economic sector. There is no lack of ambition because 5,000 jobs are expected in the drone industry by 2022. Applications in agriculture will have to be profitable if they want to break through, but the main problems are the small land parcels and the intensive nature of Flemish agriculture.

The West Flanders practice centre INAGRO opted to develop cereals – an extensive crop with low added value – as a test case. In 2017 for the first time they offered fertilisation advice based on data from drone images. (source images INAGRO).

This enabled farmers to develop site-specific,grain parcel fertilisation. “We also want to be able to do this for other crops in the long term, but for crops such as potatoes and vegetables, it is still too difficult to deliver fertilisation advice. We can only manage this for grains “, says Jonathan Van Beek, precision agriculture research leader at INAGRO.

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Following the SEED kickoff meeting AIN held a meeting with the Director of the Vocational Training Service at the Education department of the Government of Navarra, Esther Monterrubio and the person responsible for the Internationalisation of VET Jaime Valdeolmillos.

Discussions focused on the active involvement of the Ministry as an associated partner to the project and plans to create a technical team for the benchmarking of the existing CV and the development of a new CV in the field, as well as planning student and staff mobility.

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Round Table at Slovak University of Agriculture
On January 31, 2019 SUA welcomed several representatives of vocational schools and training centres from the Nitra region of Slovakia. Experts from SUA introduced the SEED project, its main idea and objectives.

During the discussion the use of drones and mobile robots for agricultural purposes was presented. By the end of the meeting, the guests were keen to be involved in further activities of SEED and contribute for example to the evaluation of project outcomes and outputs.

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