FAIRshare launches new Assessment Tool to help Farm Advisors select suitable Digital Tools

The EU funded H2020 FAIRshare (Farm Advisory Digital Innovation Tools Realised and Shared) project launched in November 2018 and with 22 partners involved includes a mix of advisory services, organisations and research institutions from across the EU. The aim of FAIRshare is to enable a more digitally active farm and farm advisory community. FAIRshare focuses explicitly on the sharing and use of existing Digital Advisory Tools and Services (DATS) and these can range from communication tools, farm software, benchmarking tools, web and phone applications, digital education and training materials and supports, among others.

The FAIRshare project has developed a DATS Inventory to share and create awareness of the availability of existing DATS across Europe. To date, 227 DATS are available on the inventory and most recently, a new DATS Assessment Tool has been added to this Inventory. The main aim of the new DATS Assessment tool is to assist advisors in evaluating and selecting the most appropriate DATS to meet to their needs.The tool does this by evaluating selected tools using a uniform set of criteria, which has been tried and tested with farm advisors from across the different regions of Europe.

The lead technical officer who worked on developing the tool, Marta Goni Labat of INTIA in Spain, stated, “The assessment tool will enable advisors and support them to bridge the digital era, strengthening their digital capacities through the implementation of new digital tools from the FAIRshare Inventory.”

The tool is now available to download in 11 different regional languages including Croatian, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Slovenian and Spanish. It is envisaged that the tool will also be developed as a web-based tool in the coming months.

You can access the tool and some guidelines on how to use it at https://fairshare-pnf.eu/assessment-tool

Notes:

• The FAIRshare project is an EU funded Horizon 2020 Project with the grant agreement number 818488.