Polish regional agricultural advisory centre delivering IPM, agroecology, and farmer wellbeing programmes to farming communities in north-central Poland.
Kujawsko-Pomorski Agricultural Advisory Centre in Minikowo is a regional public extension service in north-central Poland that supports farmers with practical guidance on sustainable crop protection, farm management, and agroecological practices. Their core work involves translating research findings into actionable advice for working farmers — running training programmes, demonstration activities, and peer-to-peer knowledge exchange networks. In H2020 projects they contribute as a regional advisory node, providing access to local farming communities and on-the-ground implementation capacity that academic partners cannot replicate. More recently they have expanded their mandate to address the social and psychological dimensions of farming, including farmer wellbeing and rural social innovation.
Participated in IPMWORKS (2020–2025), an EU-wide farm network promoting cost-effective IPM strategies and pesticide reduction across multiple crop types including horticulture, viticulture, and field crops.
Both IPMWORKS and FARMWELL rely on advisory centres like this one to deliver peer-to-peer learning and co-innovation processes directly to farm-level practitioners.
IPMWORKS keywords include agroecology, sustainability, and co-innovation, reflecting experience advising on whole-system approaches to reducing chemical inputs.
FARMWELL (2021–2023) addressed mental health, social challenges, and social innovation in farming communities — a clear departure from purely technical advisory work.
Their first project (IPMWORKS, 2020) centred on technical farming practice — IPM, pesticide reduction, agroecology, and peer-to-peer knowledge sharing across diverse crop sectors including vegetables, fruit trees, and field crops. Their second project (FARMWELL, 2021) shifted focus entirely to the social and psychological dimensions of farming: mental health, social challenges, and innovation for farmer wellbeing. With only two projects it is impossible to confirm a firm strategic pivot, but the trajectory suggests an advisory centre beginning to address the full spectrum of challenges farmers face — not just agronomic, but human.
They appear to be broadening from technical crop advisory into social support services for farming communities, tracking the EU's growing policy recognition that agricultural transition requires addressing farmer wellbeing alongside technical practice change.
They have participated exclusively as consortium partners — never as project coordinators — across both H2020 projects, both of which are Coordination and Support Actions (CSA) with large multi-country networks. This reflects a clear role as a regional implementation and dissemination node rather than a research or coordination lead. Working with 49 partners across 19 countries through just two projects indicates they join broad European coalitions where their value is local farmer access and regional advisory reach in Poland.
They have connected with 49 unique partners across 19 countries entirely through large EU-wide CSA consortia. Their network is geographically broad at the project level, but their operational mandate and farmer relationships are concentrated in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian region of north-central Poland.
As a public regional extension service rather than a university or research institute, they offer something most consortium partners cannot: direct, trust-based relationships with working farmers in a major Polish agricultural region. This makes them particularly valuable to projects that need national-level dissemination, farmer recruitment for pilots, or practical knowledge transfer to non-academic audiences. Their combination of technical IPM expertise and emerging social innovation experience also makes them relevant across both crop protection and rural development consortia.
