Improving farmers' wellbeing through social innovation

The main objective of FARMWELL is to ensure that individual farmers and farming families benefit fully from social innovation research and practices, which in turn will result in strengthening farmers’ wellbeing and linkages between the farming sector and the wider society. In an increasingly globalised and modernised world, the agricultural sector is facing a series of economic, environmental and social pressures and challenges. The characteristics of globalisation include the worldwide spread of new technologies, particularly in communications, but also in production systems (e.g. precision farming) and in the functioning of entire food chains. While economic and environmental implications of a globalising and modernising agriculture have been discussed more widely, there is also increasing attention, and consequently an increasing body of research and policy interventions on the social implications. Pressures and related social consequences - such as mental health issues, isolation, weakening family ties - are present at all levels from the individual farmers, through farming families to farming communities. An alarming sign of the serious social issues is the increasing suicide rate of farmers. The social challenges that farmers, farming families and communities have been facing call for new and innovative solutions. Social innovations have been identified as possible ways to address challenges. In the context of agriculture and farming, social innovation is mostly associated with improving agricultural practices to improve the wellbeing of the wider society (e.g. through food safety or environmentally friendly food production). Social innovation is rarely offered as a solution to improve the social wellbeing of farmers and farming families. The main novelty of FARMWELL is that it aims to identify and make more accessible those social innovation practices that can help improving the social wellbeing of farmers and farming families.