16 pages., via online journal., Organic farming is knowledge intensive. To support farmers in improving yields and organic agriculture systems, there is a need to improve how knowledge is shared. There is an established culture of sharing ideas, successes and failures in farming. The internet and information technologies open-up new opportunities for knowledge exchange involving farmers, researchers, advisors and other practitioners. The OK-Net Arable brought together practitioners from regional Farmer Innovation Groups across Europe in a multi-actor project to explore how online knowledge exchange could be improved. Feedback from the groups was obtained for 35 ‘tools’, defined as end-user materials, such as technical guides, videos and websites informing about practices in organic agriculture. The groups also selected one practice to test on farms, sharing their experiences with others through workshops, exchange visits and through videos. Farmers valued the same key elements in face-to-face exchanges (workshops and visits) as in online materials. These were the opportunity for visual observation, deeper understanding of the context in which a practice was being tried and details about what worked and what did not work. Videos, decision support tools and social media can provide useful mechanisms for taking knowledge exchange online, enabling farmers and researchers to share experiences and practical implications. Visual information, economics, details of the context, successes and failures were considered to be critical factors in good knowledge exchange tools. Online platforms and forums should not be expected to replace but rather to complement face to face knowledge exchange in improving organic farming.
12 pages, eOrganic, the Organic Agriculture Community of eXtension, has conducted webinars on organic farming research for over a decade. I examined questions asked by farmers and university researchers or educators during 52 webinars presented 2015–2017. A higher proportion of questions asked by farmers than questions asked by researchers/educators were about risks, benefits, and problem solving, and the farmers' questions contained many innovative ideas about production. A higher proportion of researcher/educator questions than farmer questions related to details of research studies, though farmers also posed questions about research methods. This article contains suggestions about tailoring research presentations to farmer audiences and confirms the mutual benefits of collaborations between farmers and researchers.
