The FEDE and the Pact for Skills for Europe’s agrifood ecosystem
Following its joining of the European Commission’s Pact for Skills in March 2021, on 27 June 2022 the FEDE signed a joint position statement on the skills needed in the European agrifood ecosystem. The FEDE’s commitment in this area follows on from its signing of a memorandum of understanding with the Employers’ Group of Professional Agricultural Organisations in the European Union (Geopa-Copa) in October 2021.
The agrifood ecosystem is one of Europe’s largest job-generating sectors. In the EU, 11 million farms and 22,000 agrifood cooperatives provide jobs to 22 million people, and 289,000 food-processing companies provide jobs to 4.5 million people. At the same time, the agri-food industry has a growing need for highly qualified workers, such as agronomists, sustainability experts, biotechnology experts and high-level technicians.
The aim of this partnership is to boost the quality of the teaching and vocational training of agrifood employees, who do not currently always have the skills needed to work effectively. The project will put in place a shared strategy to design and implement a sector-specific framework for education, teaching, upskilling and reskilling.
This will help to maximise the competitivity of all relevant actors, thereby protecting agri-food ecosystem jobs and improving their attractiveness. The project will also monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) so as to measure progress towards the objectives and identify and overcome challenges.
Project networking will help partners to organise co-operation between education and training organisations and business actors, which should also help to address skills shortages. The first stages of the project will be launched during 2022.
