Farment
The overall aim of the project is to foster farmers' entrepreneurial competencies and rural innovations through a new teaching and research collaboration network between Halmstad University in Sweden, Estonian University of Life-Sciences, Latvia University of Agriculture, and Aleksandras Stulginskis University in Lithuania.
Farmers in the Baltic Sea Region are facing common challenges, such as agricultural restrictions, the Russian ban on agricultural imports, general slow economic growth, political turbulence, deteriorating rural incomes and environmental impact. Entrepreneurial competencies and the ability to innovate are crucial factors that not only help the farmers and rural areas to adapt, but also to succeed in a rapidly changing environment.
Halmstad University is an internationally renowned teaching and research centre, which is now offering a Master's Programme in Green Agricultural Innovation (GAIN). The three Baltic universities, which are also in the process of developing a joint Master’s Programme in Agri-Food Business Management, are seeking a collaboration to exchange the best entrepreneurship and innovation teaching practices, which would help them to improve their teaching practices and materials, and to establish a common ground and the interest for research on agricultural entrepreneurship and rural innovations, in order to proceed with joint research projects in the future.
The objective of the project is three fold: firstly, to establish a new network between the Swedish university and the three Baltic universities; secondly to exchange teaching experience and develop cooperation at second-cycle level within Agri-business; thirdly, to begin to develop a project application for Horizon 2020.
