Overwhelming praise to farming advice

MDI has been evaluating the Farming advice support system as a part of European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development in Mainland Finland 2014–2020 by the order of Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. During January 2017, a broad online survey was conducted to 40 000 farmers, of which 5 300 gave responses to advice support system and also about their future development needs. Good piece of advice is truly highly valued: appr.  85–90 percent of all farmers who have used advice support state that they are satisfied or very satisfied with the advice service and its quality. From this point of view, the farming advice support – launched as a new activity for the current programming period – has indeed met the needs of farmers.

During the first two years of the programme, a total of 16 900 advice events have been carried out in nearly 10 500 farms in total. The first report of the evaluation will be finalised in March 2017.