On-farm demonstration: enabling peer-to-peer learning

By means of its policy and supportive tools, the European Commission has undertaken numerous initiatives to increase the innovativeness of the agricultural sector, with the overall aim of making Europe’s farms more competitive, environmentally sustainable and socially responsible (European Commission 2019). Recognising the importance of learning processes to innovation, in the past decade the European Commission commissioned a series of projects addressing agricultural knowledge and innovation systems (AKIS): Solinsa (Moschitz et al. 2015); FarmPath (Sutherland et al. 2015); PROAKIS (Knierim et al. 2017); AgriSpin (Koutsouris and Zacosta 2020); Agrilink (Labarthe et al. 2018); and I2 Connect. This special issue presents recent European Commissionfunded research into on-farm demonstration, undertaken through the Horizon 2020 PLAID (Peer-to-peer learning: Accessing innovation through demonstration), AgriDemo-F2F (building an interactive agridemo-hub community: enhancing peer-to-peer learning), and NEFERTITI (Networking European Farms to Enhance Cross Fertilisation and Innovation Uptake through Demonstration) projects, jointly branded ‘FarmDemo’. The European Commission (2014, 3) defines a demonstration project/activity as a: