At the turn of January and February 2022, the first online meeting of the project partners from the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands took place, which, with the regret of the whole consortium, took place in Prague instead of in person only in a virtual environment due to the current epidemiological situation.

The ON-FARM: Value-added food production and processing for local small and medium-sized farmers project aims to address the problem from the bottom-up, or aims to teach local and regional farmers in European countries how to start the production process on the farm, how to reach a wider audience of customers and how to create added value for their products instead of selling primary raw materials to agricultural conglomerates for further processing. The main objective of the project is to increase the number of direct sales from farms and thus promote an organic way of agricultural production.

We coordinated with all partners also in an online environment a very fruitful meeting during which we discussed the form of the first project deliverable and all necessary project organizational issues such as project budget, project management and monitoring rules, project evaluation and also the very important dissemination, i.e. spreading awareness about the project. In the next two years, we will work together with all partners to produce interesting educational materials and examples of good practice, which will then be used to support the farmers‘ own production.

The next international meeting of all partners is scheduled for May this year and should preferably take place in person again in Prague. We are looking forward to a face-to-face meeting, as this form of meeting is usually of great benefit to the joint work of all involved.