Within the scope of the SAGRI Sustainable Agriculture training course for agricultural workers, a meeting was held on 18 July 2019 in Lisbon (Portugal) at the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development (DGADR) with the project partners of the Portuguese Confederation of Farmers (CAP), REGIBIO and University of Evora (UEVORA) and the Directorate of Services of the DGADR, responsible for the area of vocational training.
The meeting was attended by CAP with Eng. Cláudia Gonçalves, Eng. Alexandra Brito and Eng. Maria Luís Fino, by REGIBIO with Eng. Vasco Lopes, by UEVORA with Dr. Patrícia Lourenço, and by DGADR with Sub-director General Filipa Horta Osório, Eng. Mª de São Luís Centeno, Eng. Sandra Candeias and Eng. Custódia Correia.
The aim of the meeting was, through the three entities that constitute the national consortium of the project, to present the innovative training course on Sustainable Agriculture, which allows farmers to obtain a Certification of Participation and Certification of “Sustainable Farmer” (ISO 17024), in view of their possible recognition by the Portuguese Ministry of Agriculture. The Eng. Alexandra Brito gave an overview of the project and the Eng. Vasco Lopes explain the course structure and the use of SAGRI course platform (sagri.regibio.com). In Portugal, the training course for farmers was adapted to the implementation model required for the training to be properly recognized and approved by the main public education and training bodies. In the end, the representatives of the DGADR were very satisfied with the potential of the SAGRI course, being receptive to the introduction of the modules, after analyzing the programmatic contents, as new Short-Term Training Units (UFCDs) for the certification of technicians in Agriculture Sustainable (level 4).