The Agricultural Consultants Association (ACA) will host its annual general meeting (AGM) tomorrow (Thursday, March 4) by video conferencing.

Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue will be among the speakers who will address the meeting.

The minister is due to begin his contribution at 9:40am. Immediately before that, ACA president Tom Canning will open proceedings.

After the minister concludes his remarks, Inge van Oost, policy officer for research and innovation at the Directorate-General of Agriculture (DG AGRI) in the European Commission, will address the meeting.

She will speak from 10:15am, and will give a presentation on agriculture knowledge and innovation systems (AKIS), and the role of farm advisors in supporting farmers in the next Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

There will be a break at 11:00am, and at 11:15am the actual AGM portion of the meeting will begin. Proceedings are due to end at around 1:00pm.

AKIS

The subject of van Oost’s presentation – AKIS – is described as “a concept describing how people and organisations join together to promote mutual learning and to generate, share, and use agriculture-related knowledge and information”.

The stated aim is to help “farmers, advisors and researchers improve the way they work with each other”.

It comes under the remit of the European Innovation Partnership for agriculture (EIP-AGRI).