AgriHubi – farmers' competence network (Finland)
AgriHubi is established at the beginning of year 2021 to strentghen Finnish AKIS -actors' collaboration, faster knowledge transfer, and to improve Finnish agriculture's profitability. Importance of these increases as food production is a collective game, where forces must be brought together to support agricultural and horticultural entrepreneurs. The latest knowledge must be made available to extension, education and entrepreneurs in an agile way.
Working groups within AgriHubi
AKIS -group
Our AKIS group has been forming since spring 2021 when regular meetings among different stakeholders were begun. The group has representatives of farmers’ unions, education, advisory services, research institute, CAP Network, Finnish Food Authority, AgriHubi, and Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. The aim is collaborate with more structure way enhancing the knowledge flow within the network.
Education -group
Finnish agricultural education representatives meet on regularly to share common development needs. This group has gathers secondary and tertiary educators together. Also representatives of advisory, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry as well as Finnish National Agency of Education are included.
Smart agriculture -group
Within the field of digitalization and data the development is fast. There are a great number of development paths that require different competencies. This group is a place for researchers, educators, advisors, farmers, farmers’ unions, CAP network, and administration representatives to meet on regularbase to discuss about recent developments and how to disseminate those on farmers’ daily operations when needed.
Project planners -group
Project funding is an important tool for R&D&I in Finnish agriculture and rural development. As we have many actors within the sector, there is also knowledge gaps of each others’ expertise and points of interest. However, the project planners in different organizations do have knowledge of their own focuses. This group supports their common knowledge sharing, pointing out interesting project proposal calls, as well as finding new partners on project consortiums.
Communication -group
Members of communication group are communication specialists from those organizations that are represented on AgriHubi’s steering group. AgriHubi is a network and the efficiency of the network is only reachable with strong commitment to the common work and also disseminating this within each others’ own networks and channels.
Steering group
Steering group members represent organizations committed to AgriHubi with financial inputs. They represent different aspects of AKIS. Full-time farmers from different production branches are well present on the meetings. Steering group is supervising the AgriHubi’s network actions.
Working group of horticulture
Working group of horticulture is facilitated by Svenska lantbrukssällskapens förbund (SLF) and belongs to the umbrella of AgriHubi’s working groups. Horticulture sector in Finland is relatively small and the AKIS work is efficient as the development projects collect the horticulture actors to work together.