Sustainability Training for Organic Advisors (STOAS)

The STOAS project believes that farm development should primarily be achieved by motivating farmers and enhancing their skills (production techniques, entrepreneurship) rather than by regulations and labels. Thus farm advisers can have a prominent role to play in further increasing the sustainability of organic farming. Funded by the EU's Lifelong Learning Programme in 2012-2014, eight European organic associations developed two training courses for advisors. These included using some recently developed tools to evaluate the overall sustainability of organic farms. By helping farmers to come to grips with sustainability goals and their own objectives, the advisors can motivate farmers to go beyond the minimum organic criteria.