D4.1 First version of Agroecology Exchange Network Knowledge Hub

The role of technologies for sustainable agricultural development is strongly increasing in the current changing world. Social networks, as an example of technologies widely used by society, have become an embedded part of everyday life. Thus, this type of tool could also be used by farmers and agriculture related stakeholders and provide social and information support to people that are already applying or going to start agroecology.
The European Agroecology Exchange Hub is aiming to be a tool that provide a strong contribution to social development through its attempt to link people with different backgrounds , knowledge and skills with the same interest for agroecology, thereby also
contributing to filling the famous gap between farmers and academia. Furthermore, the Hub is planned as an open space for sharing agroecology knowledge, practice and experiences by its future users. This Hub is not the first one created for strengthening agroecology. However, the European Agroecology Exchange Hub will be a complementary tool, and its main features include strong agroecology focus, multi stakeholders target audience, networking activities, a participatory and bottom up approach in order to give an opportunity for different stakeholder ’s.

In order to describe the Hub and process of its development, the report is structured as follows. The first section pro vides an introduction to the aims of the Hub, its overall structure and the agreement with the ALL Ready project for a similar tool but which is focussed on data sharing. The second section describes the methodology and development process. The third secti on includes further steps of the Hub testing and dissemination. Designed pre test versions of the Homepage and the user’s profile are provided in Annex 4.