Establishing and running Living Labs: Climate Farm Demo 2-day kick-off workshop in the Netherlands
Launched last December, our new EU project Climate Farm Demo aims to strengthen the capacity of farmers to implement, demonstrate and adopt climate-smart farming (CSF) practices across the EU and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 35% over the project lifetime.
ÖMKi is a partner in the project (together with nine other living laboratories) with its "Organic Soil Building Technologies" living laboratory project, which aims to develop new soil-friendly, herbicide-free agro-techniques (reduced tillage) together with farmers and advisors as a Hungarian member of the project's living laboratory network.
The Living Labs Network got to know each other during a two-day workshop on 19-20 April 2023, hosted by Wageningen University in the Netherlands.
The 10 Living Laboratories (LL) of the Climate Farm Demo project have as their core objective to innovate and co-design new climate-smart farming practices. A monitor and facilitator from each of the 10 LL team (from the Netherlands, Slovakia, Portugal, Hungary, Italy, the UK, Sweden, Germany, France, and Spain) joined the workshop, where participants were given different support and methodologies to develop the LLs, allowing them to develop a start-up plan. The work undertaken in the framework of the workshop will reinforce the milestone of establishing ten fully operational LL by October 2023.
Throughout the workshop, the living lab teams began the strategy and action planning phase of the LLs. The living lab teams also explored the boundaries of each LLs, specifically to gain a certain amount of clarity on the current state of the LLs in each country. As a starting point, a problem definition was created in each LL, with core problems and challenges having been identified. In subsequent steps, the LLs identified their resources, capabilities, collaboration, and innovation potential. Then, a GAP analysis (assesses the differences between the actual and expected performance in an organization) identified their future needs and objectives. Furthermore, the methodological framework supporting the creation of the LLs allowed the teams to set appropriate targets for the LLs for the next six months, taking into account their current status and maturity. In addition, the participants were introduced to the framework and approach (key performance questions) for Monitoring and Evaluation of LL performance. Evaluation is a particularly important tool in the LLs, as it promotes transparency in the co-creation process among participants, encourages reflexivity and learning among participants, and improves decision-making.
The network's living labs will meet again in February 2024, by which time all 10 LLs will be up and running.
