Dissemination of agricultural knowledge using a collaborative multidisciplinary co-creation platform: a case study

ABSTRACT

This work defines a framework for agricultural learning based on university-led collaborative co-creation vehicles such as multidisciplinary innovation platforms. This work compares the scope of dissemination and learning strategies of European research projects with the use of an innovation and co-creation training platform boasting an attractive central theme that integrates different online activities, social media, webinars, podcasts, slack channel, online courses and, after COVID-19, face-to-face field days. The materials to be disseminated are created and transmitted by farmers, technicians, researchers, … The farmer is linked to a platform of a current topic, which involves coordination from the university, with no commercial aspects and free for users. The platform, after 3 years in operation, has more than 90,000 annual views from 10 countries. Comparing with the best answer in research project dissemination, the platform has 94%, 25% and 50% more users in LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, respectively. Users value the usefulness of the webinars and blog. With these results, we want to show agricultural communicators and dissemination agents of research projects, that there are more efficient ways of dissemination, not only social media or conferences focused only on project results.

KEYWORDS:

• Learning platform
• Synergynuts
• research dissemination
• connecting researchers and technicians
• postgraduate training
• interactive learning

Acknowledgments

To Mario González-Mohino, Bernardo Muñoz and María Soriano of Agromarketing online for their support in content creation, marketing and network management.

To Emilio LLopis from GLR partners for his support with the surveys.

To Gerardo Brox and J.M. Lacarte from Agromillora, Tomás Pérez and Javier Juarez from AZUD, Javier López and Francis López from I.D. David, Pablo Tornos and Oscar Muñoz from AGQlabs, Sebastian Ruano and Rocío Muller from Tradecorp, Andreia Moises and Gustavo Ramos from Veracruz, Javier Lodares from New Holland, Jose Mtnez Tornero from Novagric and Javier Martínez and Marta Pérez from Agbar for their help and for placing their trust in my university and in me.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by private funds.

Notes on contributors

M.D. Gómez-López

M.D. Gómez-López is an assistant professor and researcher at the Polytechnic University of Cartagena (Spain) for 25 years. She is involved in several ongoing projects, such as Inbestsoil, Bioservice, SoildiverAgro and AGROSUS, funded by the EU, and leads a collaborative innovation platform called Synergynuts. She is also involved in other Spanish agricultural projects such as CLIMCOVER and OLEACOVER. Her research interests include new farming systems and practices to increase agriculture sustainability, soil health and biodiversity, soil carbon and carbon farming, agricultural waste management and LCA.