AKI colleagues, Pál Goda, Managing Director and Szabolcs Vágó, Director’s Advisor and Head of Division at EIP-AGRI, participated in the Team Week of EU CAP Network’s Support Facility for Innovation and Knowledge exchange (EIP-AGRI) in the first week of October in Leuven. EIP- AGRI is an international consortium in which AKI is a partner. One of the main objectives of Team Week is to bring all participants together physically twice a year and to strengthen team cohesion. In fact, apart from the management team members, the rest of the staff usually work online and only meet each other at the physical events organised by SF. Another important part of the programme is to discuss the tasks of the annual work plan, as well as to participate in skills development training and field visits usually linked to Operational Groups. This event also included training programmes on “Clear writting” and “Storytelling”, as well as two field visits (BoerEnCompagnie, Pcfruit).
The first one was the BoerEnCompagnie, which is a cooperative farm working according to the principles of Community Shared Agriculture (CSA). They are building an ecological agricultural model, in which the community is actively involved and the consumer pays in advance for the harvest. The farm currently has more than 700 affiliated members.
The second was Pcfruit who launched an Operational Group to predict the yield of everbearing strawberry plants growing in substrate under protective tunnels by counting flowers. This initiative leverages advanced technologies, including mini drones, moving sensors, and AI image analysis, to address the inefficiencies and inaccuracies of traditional yield prediction methods.
The event was also attended by DG AGRI staff and representatives of other EU CAP NETWORK (CAP Implementation Contact Point, European Evaluation Helpdesk for the CAP, Communication and Logistical Support team).