News

Newbie is funded by the European Commission as a thematic network project and frames within the EIP-AGRI. The agricultural European Innovation Partnership (EIP-AGRI) works to foster competitive and sustainable farming and forestry that ‘achieves more and better from less’. It contributes to ensuring a steady supply of food, feed and biomaterials, developing its work in […]

Newbie will organize a European event on the 4th – 6th of February 2020 in Ljubljana. The goal of this event is to exchange best practices in the domain of New Business Models for New Entrants in farming. This event is co-organized with CEJA (European Council of Young Farmers). Tuesday 4th of February, a conference […]

On the 18th and 19th of June, the JRC Foresight organised a workshop on the Future of Farming in Europe. About 30 participants attended this workshop, with a good balance between researchers, farmers and other stakeholders in the food chain. The key question on the table was straightforward: what will farming look like in 2040 […]

The French Steering Group met in Paris the 5th of June. The main subject of this meeting was  “farm succession” with the goal of sharing what all stakeholders are doing on this topic. The discussion demonstrated that many tools were already developed in France to facilitate farm succession. But the discussion raised questions about their […]

Business Incubator – Gotse Delchev organized a Newbie project meeting on 22-24 May in Sofia. Thanks to a very well organized field program, the Newbie consortium and its expert board got a glance of the challenges and obstacles of new entrants in Bulgaria. The field visit started with a  travel to Samokov area where we […]

Blagoy Andonov from Limo Buls   is the first Bulgarian NEWBIE winner of the year.  Blagoy cultivates more than 120 ha arable land in a remote border region and produces forage for the farms in the area. He has overcome one of the biggest problems in Bulgaria- a very fragmented land and many owners to deal […]

Business Incubator – Gotse Delchev organized a Newbie project meeting on 22-24 May in Sofia. What results are achieved so far and what would be done were actively discussed by the partners. Access to labor in agriculture and access to markets, capital and land are challenges not only for Bulgarian new entrants but for the […]

Last week was the sustainability week, which did not pass silently at KU Leuven. Many initiatives have been undertaken, among which also the foodprint debate. The Ecoteam of the Social Science Department invited some experts on food and agriculture. Vice Rector Gerard Govers opened the evening, pointing on the importance of a foodprint debate during […]

Michael Stücke, shepherd from Westphalia, won the first Newbie Award in Germany. On May 8th the German project partners the University of Applied Sciences South Westphalia and the German Rural Youth Organization presented the award as part of an event from f3 farm.food.future. Michael Stücke started as a lateral entrant in sheep farming with only […]

New ‘Start to Farm’ conference will bring aspiring farming entrepreneurs from across the UK together for motivation, inspiration and empowerment 30 April 2019 An exciting new one-day event around innovation, inspiration and practical advice for entrepreneurs looking to start their own farming business will be taking place on 4th June 2019.  ‘Start to Farm UK’ […]

Lynbreck Croft, a 150-acre mixed habitat croft enterprise located in the Cairngorms National Park, has been declared winner of the NEWBIE UK award for New Entrant Farm Business of the Year and will be presented with their award at the Royal Highland Show 2019. The European Commission-funded NEWBIE project offered the award to new entrants in […]

The representatives of Regional livestock association, farmers, new entrants, municipalities, district agricultural offices and team of the Business incubator-Gotse Delchev participated in the discussion circle of #NEWBIE project in Kyustendil, Bulgaria on April 2019. Access to land was the focus of it, in particularly access to municipal land in mountainous area. Problems and challenges   discussed:  […]

The Newbie consortium will publish regularly practice descriptions. These descriptions outline an current challenge for new entrants, and opportunities to deal with this challenge. A first practice abstract published deals with Access to land with a farm related land fund and was developed by Wageningen University. For many start up farmers, finding and particularly financing […]

The third meeting of the steering group in Germany took place in the beautiful Thuringian Forest. The members of the steering group looked back on an exciting project year with lively discussions, short video portraits of newbies and first results from the new entrant case study collection. The University of Applied Sciences South Westphalia reports […]

On March 14, 2019 the second Discussion Circle meeting in Slovenia was organized. The meeting took place at Higher education institution Grm Novo mesto – Centre of Biotechnology and Tourism and it was attended by over 50 participants. Since the first Discussion Circle meeting in September 2018 was dedicated to the access to farmland (and […]

Thursday 14/03/’19 marks the end of the first Newbie Award Flanders. Eight nominees, all with equally interesting stories, joined the final conference in a Brewery near Leuven. Our final winner was Boer Olivier (EN: “Farmer” Olivier) who displays both a strong social media network, innovative production methods and a marketable story. Olivier joint the family farm. […]

Panel debate: Future of Farming in Flanders, 25 February 2019, Kinrooi The agricultural sector faces major challenges. The most ‘popular’ challenge concerns sustainability. Yet, sustainability has many dimensions. Is there a future for young farmers in Flanders, and what does this look like? How will markets evolve? What can we expect from the future generations […]

The Portuguese Newbie team visited Paulo Martins. Paulo Martins, is a young chef which, at the age of 37, switch the big cities, restaurants and bars by a small rural village in Alentejo and the kitchen by a distillery. He was responsible of a restaurant kitchen in Portugal capital, Lisbon, and one day, challenged by a […]

On January 24, Andries Visser, coordinator of the Newbie project handed out the first Dutch Newbie award at the yearly organic agriculture fair in Zwolle, the Netherlands. The award was given to Els Hegger and Stefan Landstede of the farm “de Mobiele Gaard” which can be translated as “The mobile garden”. The Dutch steering committee […]

Newcomers are crucial for both the conservation of European agriculture as for the development of the European countryside. The European project Newbie puts successful starters and their business models in the picture and organizes an annual competition for these “newbies”. The first Newbie competition in Belgium is meanwhile ongoing. Until December 23, 2018, farmers could […]

In Slovenia, we have finished case studies collection. Our newbie colleagues at the University of Ljubliana interviewed 10 new entrants in farming (newcomers and successors of farm), including farmers from all 5 macroregions in Slovenia (as you can see on the map) with different types of farm orientation (specialised and mixed farming), different farm size (1,5-78 ha), organizational and marketing approach. […]

Joint Ventures: the benefits for new entrants and land owners  3rd January 2019 at St Aldates Church, Oxford Real Farming Conference, 11.30 am – 12.30 pm Are you a new entrant looking for land/business opportunities? Or are you a land owner/land agent who may be considering bringing in a new person/business to diversify, make better […]

Andries Visser, coordinator of the newbie project was invited to speak about the role of new entrants in vitalising marginal areas on the conference #Feedingtheworld2018 in Madrid, Spain.

Desktop research on new entrant business and entry models and analyses of educational resources Several hurdles occur for new entrants throughout Europe. These are in particular access to land, capital, labour, markets, and housing as well as business skills, knowledge development, and social networks. Access to land is consistently found to be the largest barrier […]

Countdown to first Newbie Award in the UK As momentum builds in the UK Newbie network,  judges for the first new Entrant Farm Business of the Year Award have been announced. Presidents of the five farming unions representing the four UK regions will come together to pick a winner in January, after the application deadline […]

We need more Newbies The average age of farmers in Ireland in 2016 was 55 years of age, while the number of family farm holders who were aged less than 35 years old was just 7.4%. This age profile mirrors the statistics of other member states across the EU. New entrants are vital to the […]

On the 1st of October 2018, a team of the Newbie consortium met in Brussels with representatives from both COPA-COGECA and CEJA.

International learning was in evidence at Forest Farm Dairy, run by ‘Farmer’s Weekly Young Farmer of the Year’ for 2015, William Willis.

Kirsten Williams is a farm advisor and livestock expert for SAC Consulting, as well as coordinating the New Entrant’s programme for the Scottish Farm Advisory Service.

The NEWBIE team continues to build networks between newcomers, farm successors and their advisors across Europe, in order to increase the ability of farm successors and newcomers to agriculture to develop successful farm businesses.