Small farms make a considerable contribution to territorial development, they provide specialised local and regional products as well as support social, cultural, and environmental services. Farming activities which respect the landscape value and heritage bring added value to the landscape and create potential for agri-tourism development. However, agricultural production depends on unpredictable natural conditions and the direct sale of agricultural products from farms is not easy. These reasons motivate farmers to start doing complementary business in non-agricultural activities. The targeted group of the FEAL project are young farmers, young rural entrepreneurs and family farmers. The share of population participating in lifelong learning courses in rural areas of the EU-27, reaches only 6.6% (European Commission, 2013). People living in rural areas may represent a group at risk of exclusion. Therefore, free access to vocational education and training material for people living in rural areas is crucial. Digital training material of the project is available under a Creative Commons License allowing the use and the distribution free of charges thus granting the access to education for everyone. The project’s training concept is adopted to be accessible through the Open Educational Resources (OER).The FEAL project aimed at developing a flexible training system based on case studies that will provide young farmers, young rural entrepreneurs and family farmers the skills and knowledge to implement sustainable farming activities within different European Agricultural Landscapes (EALs). Outputs are available in 7 languages: English, Slovak, German, Spanish, Italian, Slovenian and French, thus making the results accessible to around the 70% of European citizens speaking these languages as mother tongue (European Commission, June 2012).The FEAL consortium consists of eight partners' organisations from Belgium, Germany, Italy, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain. The variety of organisations guarantees a multidisciplinary approach reflecting in educational material; two institutions are public and provide education and research, three agencies focus on project management and provide advisory services for farmers, one is a local action group and one residing in Brussels is a unique federation of national associations from the EU28 representing the interests of the landowners, land and forest managers and rural entrepreneurs at the European political level.The project's conceptual research framework consists of a methodology to compare farming practices in different EALs considering landscape value. The project resulted into the development of a comprehensive and flexible e-learning training system. It is adapted to the learners' heterogeneous conditions showing sustainable and multifunctional farming practices improving the quality of EALs in a pan-European context. The project implemented several innovative elements mirroring in its intellectual outputs: O1: Summary report about the state of the art of the relation between sustainable / multifunctional farming practices and EALs; O2: Case studies. Online database represents best practices of farms situated in different EALs with specific regional and local features reflecting the variety of social and economic systems. Case studies implementing win-win-situations provide the opportunity for trainees to learn through real, successful experiences and, for the first time, an entrepreneurial exchange about the topic on regional, national and European levels; O3: FEAL complementary to OER includes training modules and interactive E-Atlas and both materials are linked with other outputs; O4: Pilot testing and development of the definitive training system – FEAL-EDUWEB and its adaptation to VALOR platform and Moodle. FEAL-EDUWEB contains educational material and online self-evaluation forms for knowledge testing.Farmers, rural development organisations, farmers associations, local action groups and representatives of policy makers were invited to multiplier events organized at the end of the project by the consortium partners. The aim was to raise awareness to stakeholders about the possibilities offered by sustainable farming activities, the win-win-situations within different EALs and to integrate the results of the FEAL project into wider national and European practices and programmes.

<< Background >>Transhumance is a farming system that comprises seasonal movement with livestock between fixed summer and winter pastures. It is a prevalent but rarely noticed form of land use across Europe. Transhumance can be considered not only as a sustainable way of land management, it also presents answers to urgent societal challenges: Adaptation of land use in times of climate change by re-introducing traditional farming practices and/or old species that provide an important gen-pool, contributing to the EU-Green deal as production of local food contributes to reducing carbon rates of agriculture and answering the society’s demand of locally produced, high quality food, valorisation of rural areas and stopping the trend of rural exodus by providing job alternatives. Other goods and services provided include increasing biodiversity (e.g. habitats for pollinators), water quality and soil fertility, preserving cultural heritage including tacit knowledge about farming practices and local food products, and shaping place-specific open landscapes that reflect history, community and belonging and that many consider to be attractive. Attractive landscapes may again help fostering rural tourism and development. In sum, traditional farming systems can contribute to sustainable rural areas both ecologically, economically, culturally and socially. Due to their place of residence and not at least due to the movement inherent in transhumance and the often not easy to access place of work practitioners of transhumance can be at risk of exclusion from life-long-. Access to Vocational Education and Training (VET) provides an important opportunity to access information and education for this profession.<< Objectives >>TRANSFARM aims at developing training material that provides especially young famers and rural entrepreneurs who want to start with and/or maintain transhumance with skills and knowledge to better address the changing challenges and new demands of their job such as knowledge about business development and communication skills. To make the access to training easier, training materials will be available under a creative commons license allowing their use and distribution free of charges. With our project we aim to reach the following objects:Objective 1: The first objective of the project is to provide an overview about the current situation of transhumance in the partners’ countries. Information about transhumance is scattered, not readily available and not prepared for comparison. Objective 2: The second objective of the project is to collect case studies of best practice that convey the experiences of successful transhumance practitioners. Object 3: The third objective is to develop digital training material for transhumance practitioners consisting of e-learning modules, general information about transhumance in different countries, a database of case studies of best practice assembled in an easily accessible way for self-learning.<< Implementation >>The TRANSFARM project consists of 7 partners. The Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NO), Institute for Research on European Agricultural Landscapes e.V. (DE), Hof und Leben (DE), onProjects (OnP) (ES), the Technical University of Zvolen (SK), the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTh) (GR) and the European Landowner Organisation. All TRANSFARM partners are very active in the field of sustainable development in rural areas and of landscapes. These partners will be supported by three associated partners (Farm advisory (PL), The Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy (NIBIO) (NO), VetAgroSup (FR)). The associated partners add new geographical regions in which different types transhumance are practiced. Furthermore, they will support the already involved partners by providing access to additional data. Especially Farm advisory and VetAgroSup are very much involved in training activities including Open Educational Resources and are therefore important regarding the dissemination of project results.<< Results >>The first main outcome of the project is an overview about the current situation of transhumance in the participating European countries including information about types and degree of practices and resulting landscapes, support schemes for transhumance and specific knowledge needed by transhumance practitioners. This information will be presented in form of a e-reference book providing the following specific results a) 5 National Reports about the current situation of transhumance (Germany, Greece, Norway, Slovakia, Spain), b) 1 Summary Report enlarged with information about the situation in Europe in general, c) e-glossary containing definitions of topic-related key terms to enhance communication among differences languages and cultures. The second main outcome of the project is a data base with cases studies of best practice of successful transhumance practitioners. Specific results are presented through c.15 studies from 8 European countries (Czechia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Slovakia). The third main outcome is the production of digital training material for transhumance practitioners that will be available online and free of charge for self-learning. The training material will consist of the following modules: a) learning modules, b) general information about transhumance in different countries, c) database of case studies of best practice. In addition to, the project will produce the following minor outcomes: Production of material for proper management and communication among project partners. This material will be publicly accessible. The following material will be produced: 1) management guidelines, 2) reporting procedures and administrative guidelines and 3) meeting minutes from 6 transnational meetings. Production of material to monitor and evaluate the project. The following material will be produced 1) meeting evaluation questionnaires, project progress questionnaires, multiplier events evaluation questionnaires, 2) evaluation reports (mid-term and final evaluation report, project results reports) and a Project Risks Analysis (PRA). Production of dissemination material to exploit the project results. The following material will be produced 1) project graphic design, 2) project website, 3) project mailing list, 4) newsletter in digital format, 5) informative brochure and 5) hard copies of the training material (USB sticks) to be distributed during the multiplier events.