Final Report Summary - SOFAR (Social Services in Multifunctional Farms - Social Farming) 'Social farming' (or 'care farming' or 'green care') is a term used to describe a wide range of diverse farming practices aimed at promoting disadvantaged people's rehabilitation or care and / or contributing towards the integration of people with 'low contractual capacity' (i.e. psychophysical disabilities, convicts, drug addicts, minors, emigrants). Social farming appears as an evolving, dynamic scenario in Europe, which is gaining increasing attention from multiple stakeholders in recent times. Particularly social farming represents a new chance to broaden the scope of European rural development - to diversify farming / rural activities and enhance the role of a renewed agriculture in society. The overall aim of the SOFAR project was to support the building of a new institutional environment for social farming by linking research to practitioners / rural players; by bringing diverse European experiences together to enable exchanges and comparisons of experiences to take place and by bringing together key stakeholders in social farming and rural development who can support the designing of future policies at regional and European levels. Social farming is an emerging topic for farms and farmers as well as for different stakeholders in Europe. An innovative use of agriculture is quite often introduced directly from the bottom by new and existent farmers, as well as welfare institutions. Social farming includes all activities that use agricultural resources, both from plants and animals, in order to promote social welfare (i.e. social inclusion, rehabilitation, employment, education, therapy, etc.) in rural areas. Yet, models of interlacing social / health care and agriculture are diverse, often adjusted to local tradition and culture, as well as systems of social / health care. The general definition about social farming is not yet agreed around Europe. Still, today, there are different ways to indicate the phenomena (farming for health, green care, social farming, gardening therapy and green programs of social / health care) and to use agriculture or gardening for social / health purposes. For the progress of social farming towards an unambiguous, consistent and robust sector on a European level a joint European view on social farming has to be further developed. This has to come to a political European action agenda based on the interests and insights of the stakeholders from the different countries. Therefore, the SOFAR project, in its second period, developed a participatory 'platform' process: a national / regional platform in each participating country and a joint platform in Brussels with representatives from each country. The SOFAR consortium came together for two meetings in the first reporting period (in June 2006 in Norway on the occasion of the first European Conference on 'Farming for health' and in December 2006 at a 'social farmers' community in Tuscany, Italy) which formed the basis of close working relationships for cooperating in this action. Then, other two meetings were organised during the second reporting period (in October 2007 in Bruxelles and in January 2008 in Pisa, Tuscany), in order to established a closer working relationships for coordination activity. Each partner produced two detailed case study descriptions. The aim of this empirical research was to illustrate the nature, extent and diversity of experiences across Europe. This newly produced knowledge was integrated with more widely available information on social farming and, where possible, analysis from previous studies. However, for some participating countries, there was little or no previous relevant research available to inform the work, so the project can be regarded as 'pioneering' in this regard. In general, each contractor provided an overall description of the main features of 'social/care' farming in each country / region; players' motivations and the start-up process of the initiatives; different typologies of 'social / care farms'; the range of actors and networks involved; the economic dimension; the evolution of policies and gender / environment related aspects of the initiatives. The intention is now to develop elements of cross country / regional analysis and to produce a group of thematic papers to be published at the end of the project. Each project partner contributed to the development of an inventory of all actors, organisations and institutions associated with social farming in participating countries / regions. In all cases, this inventory was compiled from contacts made in the course of the fact-finding and data collection work. While for some project partners, it was possible to draw on existing studies in the compilation of this information, for others, there was little or no previous relevant information available. Consequently, this inventory represents a valuable additional resource to stakeholders in this area. In addition, the inventory served as an important preparatory activity for the SOFAR consortium in the establishment of country / regional platforms. Two European platforms were held in Bruxelles; the first on 18 and 19 October 2007, and the second on 26 and 27 June 2008. Responsible for the European platform's work and production has been the steering committee. European platforms represented a scaling-up of the previous country based activities at European level - following-up objectives and methodologies already experimented. The meeting created exchange and debate among country's experiences, bringing to a participatory designing of an innovation strategy at European scale. The European innovation strategy, represents the third project's milestone achieved in M24; it was designed together by researchers and diverse representatives of rural players and public institutions, being then the basis for the second regional platforms' works. Methodological lessons learnt has been also drawn on the base of the platform's experience. European platforms had to create exchange and debate among country's experiences. The latter represented deliverable 5, produced in its final agreed version by month 24 after presentation and discussion of country / regional innovation strategies. As well, this activity produced 'methodological lessons learnt', contributing to deliverable 6. European innovation strategy was targeted at reforming the Community agricultural policy (designing of CAP Programme 2007-2013), namely its so-called 'second pillar' (rural development area). To this purpose, representatives of the relevant Commission services (DG Agriculture) have been invited to participate in the European platform's meeting, in order to contribute to the designing of shared specific objectives and workplan. During the whole project period, a number of different information and communication activities was initiated. These included: - A website The development of a project website (please see http://sofar.unipi.it online) which provides information on the project partners, the project objectives, work plan and expected outcomes as well as drafts of national / regional 'state-of-the-art' reviews. It also contains links to the electronic platform (Teconline, please see http://www.teconline.it online) which serves as coordination tool for project participants. The web site will remain open and will be updated with partners' contribution also beyond the end of this project, publishing further advances and any pertinent and relevant materials and data, and continuing to provide support for electronic exchange and debate; - Newsletters A series of newsletters prepared and circulated by project partners also at national and international level, which served to raise awareness of the SOFAR project among stakeholder; highlight upcoming events and report on completed activities. Newsletters circulated among all the internal and external participants (project partners and engaged rural players, public bodies, third stakeholders and the Commission), informing on the advances of the project. - Material for press Various press releases prepared by each participating country also for specialist and general media outlets, which also served to build the profile of the SOFAR project and to provide information about relevant project events and activities. - Photo-work A special action based on 'participatory photo-work' with disadvantaged persons involved in social farming was launched. The unique aspect of this process is that it enables the so-called users or participants of social farming to tell directly about their own worlds through their own eyes, using a specific methodology inspired by the photo-voice approach. The photo-outcomes from participants can be integrated into the platforms and serve as a contribution to collective debate and discussion. - Audio-visual documentation This item had special attention. Photos or video images has been collected during visits to social / care-farms and / or during the meetings. Some special missions was organised on purpose (e.g. on-farm audiovisual interviews and video-documentation). This material will be used for feeding of the web site and to enrich the final publication. The production of a video-documentary was one of the expected outputs of the SOFAR project. Its overall goal was to give greater insights into the diverse social farming realities in Europe and promote a deeper understanding among citizens and policy-makers, as well as enhancing the process of reflection, discussion and debate among stakeholders which this project has begun. It has provided a unique opportunity for the so-called users of social farming to show their own worlds. The documentary was developed through an international 'journey' across rural Europe, leaving from Italy, carried out by Paolo Pieroni, Italian researcher and film-maker on the SOFAR team, and Andrea Fioravanti, a young man who has tried to overcome some personal psychological difficulties through his involvement with 'social farming' over many years. This journey was punctuated by meetings with different local initiatives along the route, covering all countries participating in the project (one or two cases per country). Thus, this documentary 'journey' was made possible by the active co-operation of each national team and the willingness of the local projects' holders and stakeholders, who were open to taking this opportunity for exchange. The period of production was from January to April 2008. Post-production was completed in February 2009. The documentary is published together with the book on the SOFAR project and is subtitled in five languages. The DVD aims to represent tangible fragments of real life, grasped at a particular point in space and time; incorporating the everyday dimension of these very specific and almost hidden, social agricultural worlds, making them visible: the faces, the hands at work, the labour and production processes; the particular human relations as well as the ones with plants, animals and nature. Therefore, the documentary is aimed mainly at incorporating the visual / tangible dimension of the case studies. This approach was also necessary because of the difficulty of translation and the limited resources that made it necessary to reduce 'spoken words' to a minimum. The additional information and an analytical discussion of the case studies (e.g. background, milestones, crucial support, external environment, outcomes, challenges and actions required) are supplied in the book. Related documents Final Report - SOFAR (Social Services in Multifunctional Farms - Social Farming)
