"<< Background >>The project FARMER is a study into European best practices for recruiting and retaining students to the agricultural sector. We are facing major challenges regarding recruiting, environmental issues and climate change, social development, and digitalization along with rapid technologies' development. Their changes require new skills from the educators implementing a greening in the curriculum to support students on their vocational education and training path. The project will work on the development of teachers' work in supporting students cross-cutting skills within the scope of sustainability and future needs, and the understanding of how to use pedagogical and didactic methods as a tool, to increase the attractiveness of vocational education and training in the agricultural sector. According to the practical guide “Greening Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET)” UNESCO, greening is the process of pursuing knowledge and practices regarding environmental and climate changes. Entrepreneurship and UN17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are closely linked in today’s agricultural education, which means that students need to adapt agricultural education with relevant content and teaching methods. At the same time the agricultural industry is facing problems with poor reputation, which is why the Danish Agriculture and Food Council reports that more than one in three producers in the agricultural sector is in need for qualified labor. At the same time, we are facing a youth unemployment in the EU-27 at 15,1% according to Eurostat, most of them without any vocational training and education. Students who choose an agricultural education experience a skeptical attitude toward their choice. In teachers’ learning activities, we will focus on how we support students’ skills in arguing of the importance and relevance of their choice of occupations, so that they experience pride in the choice of vocational education and training. Vocational education connects smart hands with smart minds, and FARMER connects smart minds with a stronger profile for sustainable development in Europe. According to the report,” Primed for Sustainability – A New Narrative about Technical and Vocational Education and Training”, drafted and published by The Danish National Commission for UNESCO, vocational institutions committing themselves to create a distinctive sustainability profile, they can attract more students. Moreover, teaching sustainability helps to produce insightful students with their own convictions, equipping them with the skills needed to identify new approaches to enhance sustainability. FARMER has the potential to influence the entire value-chain in the green sector, i.e., students, VETs, companies, society and at stakeholders. By mapping the needed skills of the future ‘green’ farmer, according to societal and political demands, training the educators to increase motivation and implement a green curriculum, improving the image of agricultural education in the narratives, training the enrolled students cross-cutting skills, and supporting their green, innovative, entrepreneurial mindset alongside with improving their competences with regard to language, IT and acting in a European community, the impact of the project FARMER will affect Europe's future sustainable growth and cohesion. Therefore, this project will focus on the sustainability goal No. 4, and, in particular, on No. 4.7, which ensures that all students acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to promote sustainable development through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyle. The project focuses on EU partner countries, that are already experiencing the difficulties of recruiting, motivating, and retaining students. This fact guarantees that the partners will be committed to ensuring that the project is an unconditional success.<< Objectives >>The main target group of this project is educators, who are the main persons involved in educating, motivating, and retaining students. That is why all our activities are educator-oriented and can only be accomplished with their participation. The aim of the activities is to enable the educators gaining knowledge and methods that they can use in their present and future training-curriculum. With modern teaching and ability to utilize new teaching technologies, the students will also gain essential skills that are adapted to the challenges they face after graduation.The basic purpose of the project is to train teachers/educators in developing a more practical approach to teaching. There is a focus on the exchange of teaching techniques as well as respect and understanding of the different partner countries' way of tackling the environmental and climate challenges and adding more knowledge through the exchange of best practices. The teachers will own and recognize the richness and diversity of various pedagogical and didactic approaches achieved through transnational cooperation.The projects aim at:- Supporting educators, educational leaders and support staff in communication and education to recruit and retain students. - Further strengthen key competences in initial and continuing VET.- Supporting VET educators to implement environmental and climate goals to the education and communication practices.The specific objectives of the project are:- Encouraging the establishment of a more hands-on approach teaching.- Focusing on our recruiting, motivating, and retaining students facing the environmental and climate change challenges.- Implementing the project as a goal and complementary tool to develop pedagogical and didactic methods among the participants.- To promote entrepreneurial learning directly in the participating countries and through dissemination on the webpage also in other European countries, engaging students to become true agents of change.- Raising the students’ awareness regarding possibilities of studying at an agricultural school.Therefore, the 10 partners in the project convey the knowledge gained and involve others in activities, in the effort to recruit, motivate and retain in practice. An estimated number of 50 people will benefit from the mobility activities directly. With the efficient dissemination, the best practices will be shared more widely in national and transnational contexts.Our partners represent contrasting social and economic backgrounds, and a diverse collection of communities from across Europe. Working together delivers our aims of developing new pedagogy and didactic methods and benchmarking the best practices.The project methodology is based on the concept of interdisciplinary teaching to enhance the quality of education. We aim at approaching key issues from the perspective of different subjects taught by participating educators using digital technologies and learning methods.It is expected to be a strong cooperation among institutions, municipalities, district governorships, district national education directorates, NGOs and farmers during the preparation, implementation, and sustainability of our project.<< Implementation >>Our studies and activities will be carried out with the support of all partners. They will integrate the activities into their daily lives, as one of the objectives of these EU projects suggests. Teachers will develop and exchange practical teaching and learning methods/ideas. The results will be presented digitally, and creative work will be carried out not only with the partners, but also with their own students to ensure that the recipients of teachers' development work achieve the optimal benefit. At the same time, there will be national sparring between colleagues at the schools, so that we ensure that the schools benefit fully from participating in the project, and that there will be more ambassadors who can spread the project's message and results. The focus is to raise teachers' awareness of the possibilities of choosing vocational training, as well as the reasons why young people must choose vocational training, and to start focusing more on sustainable development in education using the UN17 SDGs. This will be achieved by producing a pedagogical and didactic manual with reflections and suggestions for active methods that are invaluable for improving key Lisbon competences, such as learning to learn, interpersonal, intercultural, and social and civil competences. These will be achieved by addressing the following topics:- Competence-mapping of existing skills in agricultural education today with the aim of identifying current skills needs/gaps.- Identification of the future need for educational skills, with a particular focus on the challenges posed by the climate challenge.- Setting up personal educational skills to suit the needs of the future.- Establishment of a new framework for agricultural learning content.- Political recommendation.Throughout the project's three-year life, we will work to exchange experiences and best practices in relation to the development work of the teaching. We will look at the skills we train according to today, as well as examine what skills future farmers require. We do this to adapt our transnational development work to bridge the gap between today's cross-cutting skills and the cross-cutting skills of the future. The main focus will be on digital and technological competences, as well as on innovative and entrepreneurial competences, as they are part of the competences of the 21st century. Moreover, these competences are sought after both by the agricultural profession itself, but also by politicians as they are inscribed both in national learning strategies as well as in the EU's ""European skills agenda"". We will use surveys among teachers, students, and parents for underage students according to each WP in order to measure the effect of the work done during the mobilities, ensuring the policy recommendation answer to the needs in all partner countries.<< Results >>The project is expected to deliver four results:1)We expect to provide an analysis of the competences we teach after today. •each partner will provide data on labor market indicators:oyouth unemployment rate oactivation percentageounemployment rates by ageounemployment rates by occupationoanalysis of training programs and levels.oanalysis of the percentage intake at the different levels of education.We will achieve a demographic analysis by country but also in general for the EU, as partners are distributed throughout the EU. This will give us a picture of what recruitment is like for education in the EU, as well as where we are in relation to achieving the EU's strategy that about 30% of a youth year should take vocational training, and how many will choose an agricultural education. 2)We expect to provide an analysis of the competences that future farmers need to possess.•we will develop a matrix of the competences we expect young people to possess in the future. oanalyze the pedagogical and didactic tools we are going to teach by. oanalyze possible methods e.g., Peer-to-Peer learning, digital methods, etc. oanalyze and test methods in relation to greening the curriculum and support SD regarding environment and climate change.We will achieve the development of a matrix that contains proposals for a toolbox, from which the teachers can be inspired, and where there is a focus on different methods that strengthen the cooperation competences, as well as a focus on the professional competences in relation to the environment and climate change. 3)We expect to deliver an educational and didactic manual with a focus on a more hands-on approach to teaching that matches the skills and competences of future farmers.•we delve into the methods from paragraph 2 concerning teaching methods in relation to the environment and climate change. oanalyze the methods we are already using today and which we expect to continue with in the future. opractical transnational co-teaching to develop partners' practices across partners.oanalyze how we can produce in a ""different way"", cf., the French Ministry of Agriculture.oexamine the mechanism of ""test space for settling as a farmer"" cf., Member of Pays Graines oexplore new technologies e.g., drones, ICT platforms, etc. oprepare an educational and didactic manual. We will gain an insight into some programs launched in France, with the aim of developing the personal and professional competences of the students to meet the needs of the future. The work is picked up in Belgium, where a manual of recommendations is written after testing the different methods in each partner country.4)we will conclude by drawing up a political recommendation that proposes, how the political side can support recruitment to vocational education and training, as well as the upskilling of trainers in vocational education and training. •we will make some policy recommendations based on the work we have carried out on the previous three points. orecommendations on how to support recruitment to vocational training from the political point of view. orecommendations for curriculum improvements in relation to work on the environment and climate change.We will achieve the development of policy recommendations, that we can present to relevant national and transnational stakeholders, who will support us in developing agricultural education and training to make it more attractive and facilitate access to a university education."