Abstraktihaku - European Seminar on Extension & Education (ESEE) is a biennial conference about agricultural advice and education. It aims at supporting discussion between science and practice.

Inclusivity and transformations of agricultural extension and education

27th European Seminar on Extension & Education – Vila Real (Portugal) – 1-4 July 2025

The ESEE Community

The European Seminar on Extension & Education (ESEE) is a biennial conference about agricultural advice and education. It has gathered scholars, advisors and educators since 1973. Click here to learn about past conferences organised in Ireland (2021, 24th edition), Italy (2019, 25th edition) and France (2023, 26th edition).

It aims at supporting discussion between science and practice. Hence, it is open to a diversity of contributions, both academic and practical. ESEE gathers and contrast experiences and findings from all European countries, but also between Europe and other contexts in the global North and global South. ESEE publishes each edition booking of proceedings and has lead to the publication of several special issues in the Journal of Agricultural Extension and Education and other academic publications.

Conference Theme and Topics

The central theme is “Inclusivity and transformations of agricultural extension and education”

International organisations (such as the FAO and OECD), alongside European agricultural policies, are currently focused on promoting sustainability-oriented innovation processes aimed at triggering and advancing transformative transitions of the agrifood system towards sustainability, resilience, integrative health, inclusiveness, and fairness. Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS) at various levels – ranging from farm to value chains and regions – together with agricultural education, rural extension, and farm advisory subsystems, play a crucial role in facilitating these desired transformations. Education and extension are not only major drivers but also key players in co-producing innovative and customised knowledge and skills with farmers and farming communities, ensuring the inclusiveness of sustainability-oriented transformative transitions.

Education and extension are undergoing significant transformations, including the pluralistic landscape of advice providers involved in sustainability-oriented transitions, the need to keeping in pace with new processes and organisational models driven by sustainability transitions, alongside an increasingly heterogeneous farming community and an evolving AKIS. The digitalisation of knowledge and advisory services, particularly AI (artificial intelligence), is a major ongoing transformation, presenting substantial inclusiveness challenges. These challenges risk exacerbating already complex issues of social inclusion and the health and wellbeing of farmers and communities, as well as agricultural education and extension communities.

The ESEE2025 conference aims to explore concepts, frameworks, methods, tools, and empirical evidence related to these transformative transitions of the agrifood system, from the perspective of agricultural extension and education. This includes examining its own transformation and assessing the extent of its inclusivity.

These are five key topics of the conference (click here for the presentation of the five topics)

TOPIC 1 – AKIS approaches and policies: from concepts to action and impact

TOPIC 2 – Collective learning, innovation processes and capacity building: new tools and methodologies

TOPIC 3 – AI and digitalisation of advisory services and education

TOPIC 4 – Education, advisory services and the wider AKIS’s contribution to social inclusion and the health and wellbeing of farmers and communities

TOPIC 5 – How education and advice drive agrifood systems transformations

More information

ESEE2025