NEWBIE European Project launches 2019 Award for New Entrants
The Newbie Prize is promoted to reward new agricultural business models that result from innovative ways to overcome the barriers that new agricultural entrepreneurs face when trying to establish themselves. In the Newbie project, these new entrepreneurs are defined as anyone who starts an agricultural business or engages in an existing agricultural business. They can be of any age, have different work experience and resources and can enter agriculture at any stage of their working life. All the 9 countries of the project are opening the calls to the 2019 reward at national level.
In Portugal, the Minga Integral Cooperative (https://mingamontemor.pt/), located in the Montemor-o-Novo village, was the winner of the Newbie 2018 award. MINGA promotes proximity logic of diversified supply of goods and services in Montemor-o-Novo, in particular related to the agri-food sector. The € 500 prize money was used for a MINGA member to take part in a visit to the north of France, which recently took place from 28 to 31 October 2019, within the international exchanges visits that are occurring during the Newbie project. Minga integrated the Portuguese delegation in a group of ICAAM researchers and members of the national and regional administration. This visit also included two of the nine countries that are part of the Newbie project consortium, Bulgaria and the United Kingdom.
These visits allows knowing different realities and solutions in other contexts that can be adapted to the realities and difficulties of each country. The proposed program in France aimed to make known the various operating models of business incubators, which provide the necessary support and monitoring during the first two or three years to new entrants that intend to settle in agriculture.
