Janusz Dąbrowski (CDR Brwinów)

The concept of the new type of specialization – water advisor – operating in the system of Polish public agricultural advisory services was developed as a part of the Waterdrive activities.

The aim of the new type of services is to extend the standard agricultural advisors services for development of more focused ones on water management in agriculture at farm level activities. The new specialization is based on already existing professional knowledge for advisors further developed by set of knowledge and skills acquired by advisors due to some additional professional trainings.

The Polish partner of Waterdrive carried out the following activities:

• reviewing of needs and expectations of sample of Polish agricultural advisors at the initial phase of the Waterdrive delivery process,
• designing and discussing a general concept of water advisor’s scope of activities with all relevant stakeholders,
• development of  the training materials for water advisors,
• providing a set of trainings for water advisors (two cycles of trainings in 2020 and 2021 on topics covering the water management issues) –  total over 150 trainees – 55 trainees in 2021 plus 97 in 2020) ,
• providing a training for water advisors to develop their soft skills based on Living Lab approach and two guidelines worked out as a result of the Waterdrive project (see section 6)  – around  40 trainees,
• testing of water advisor activities in the case area – 2020/2021.
• the testing water advisor was also a member of three persons team working on designing of a diagnostic tool developed  for agricultural advisors to carry out an analyses of  the cost of water in the economic calculation at a farm level (he tested the new instrument on sample of the farms in the case area).