In last May, a new Nordplsu Adult project was approved and is planned to start formally in November 2020, lasting until October 2021. Already the partners have started their conversation. The very first Zoom meeting took place in June and the group has already planned the next Zoom meeting in August 2020.

Partners are from Norway (Hanen Viken), Denmark (Lystbaekforeningen), Iceland (Adult Education at the Agricultural Univ. of Iceland) and Lithuania who are also the program director (Association Viva Sol).

The overall aim of the project is to foster establishment of the short food supply chains in rural areas through improvement of farmers knowledges on short food chain examples.

The participants of the project, the farmers, will benefit from learning from the examples of short food supply schemes in the partner countries, apply the practices in their home countries and establishing a network of like-minded farmers in partner countries.

All the partner organisations will benefit through collecting the different examples from partner countries and sharing them with the other farmers. Besides, the farmers from partner countries will be able to share their nature friendly agricultural and food production practices, especially agro-ecological one.

The project will contribute in achieving the national governments’ goals in partner countries on sustainable agriculture and environment, through promotion of direct selling of farm products by the joint farmer’s groups and raising awareness on the benefits of the short food supply chains to the farmers, environment and territory development.

There is big variety of short food supply chain schemes of agricultural products in Nordic and Baltic countries. They play a positive role both for small-scale agricultural producers and the consumers, as they help the farmers to become more sustainable and the consumers to get better quality products. Also, such schemes make an impact on territorial development and assist in reaching environmental goals, as small scale farmers apply more nature friendly agricultural methods.

National legal instruments, directed to improve economic performances of farms, include legal schemes supporting groups of producers. Nevertheless, the formation of the short food chains is still a challenge for the farmers in Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Lithuania. Acquaintance with the various short food supply chains in the Nordic and Baltic countries, would improve the skills of farmers in formation of or supporting short food supply chains in their relative countries.

Further information: Association Viva Sol, Lina Gumbrevičienė, e-mail: lina.gumbreviciene@gmail.com