First Workshop

Bjarne O. Braastad

The First Workshop of COST Action 866 will be held in Brussels 4-5 December 2006, followed by a meeting of the Management Committee 5-6 December.

Updated programme and information is found on this webpage.

The workshop is now fully booked. If you would like to be added to our mailing list for later meetings, send an e-mail to: bjarne.braastad@umb.no

For full invitation to the workshop, click here.


Aims of the workshop
The main aim of this workshop is to start the scientific work on Action 866 ‘Green care in agriculture’ by giving a general overview in a plenary session followed by activation of the scientific work in the Working Groups (WGs). This is not a scientific conference with presentation of research results, but a true workshop expecting active participation by each participant. The WGs have the following aims and work plan for this workshop:


WG1 – Health effects of green care

• The workshop shall provide an overview of the current research (including ongoing, recently completed and planned) into the health and well-being benefits of different forms of green care in Europe.
• WG members shall give a brief outline of approaches and methods used for studying green care in their countries.
• WG members shall present their outlines of theoretical frameworks and models of the benefits of green care. WG1 will formulate a strategy to develop these models so that they can be published. This may involve small groups of individuals working together on particular aspects of the model.
• WG1 shall plan the way to address the next milestone, i.e. issues of methodologies in researching green care. This should include thoughts around meetings/publications/discussion papers.


WG2 – Economics of green care

WG2 aims to get together scientists from different countries with an economic background, who have studied the multifunctional role of agriculture and farm diversification, in order to identify methodologies that may be useful to analyse the social care and health services provided by Green Care farms or Green Care initiatives.

• WG2 will discuss key concepts like multifunctionality, diversification, externalities, public goods, scope economies, and joint production. The following topics are relevant for discussion:
• Theoretical approaches to analyse the economic aspects of non-market goods and services;
• How to value the output of multifunctional agriculture and, in the case of Green care services, how take into consideration the impact of these services on stakeholders beyond the single clients: the families, the local community, the health and social systems,
• The provision of local services as a way to escape the (negative) impacts of globalization,
• The relevance of farm diversification in terms of goods and services provided, for the economic sustainability of the agricultural enterprise,
• Skills and professionalism needed by the multifunctional entrepreneur in agriculture.


WG3 – Policies related to green care

• WG members will give short summaries of the different situations in their countries concerning green care policies. What is innovative, where do problems exist, where is a need for improvement, where can we learn from each other? This should include the main actors involved, the main organisation of services in each country, and the main policies that are already working in each country related to green care.
• Based on these presentations, the WG3 will plan how to continue elaborating the crucial points concerning green care policies as the next milestone.


Programme (short version)

4th December 2006

12:00 Lunch served in the meeting room, 15th floor

Plenary meeting
12:30 Welcome. Introduction to COST Action 866. Bjarne O. Braastad

13:00 Introduction to Working Group 1. Joe Sempik
13:10 Researching the benefits of green care in Europe. Rachel Hines and Marjolein Elings

13:50 Introduction to Working Group 2. Saverio Senni
14:00 The economics of green care farming in the context of multifunctional agriculture.Saverio Senni

(short break)

14:50 Introduction to Working Group 3. Thomas van Elsen
15:00 Green care as an innovation in welfare and health. A case study. Thérèse Jacobs
15:40 Information on COST conference June 2007 (preliminary)
15:45 Coffee break

Working Group meetings
16:00-18:30 Meetings to be organised by the WG chairs according to the work plan presented above. Initially, each participant briefly presents oneself.
20:00 Joint dinner at a local restaurant

5th December

09:00-12:00 Working Group meetings continues
12:00-13:00 Lunch
13:00-16:00 Working Group meetings continues
16:00 Closure of the workshop

Management Committee meeting

17:00-19:00 Summing up the workshop

6th December
09:00-14:00 Plans for 2007 - meetings, topics, Short Term Scientific Missions, budget







Updated: 27.11.06
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