What farmers need to learn for the bioeconomy: the process behind a four-country study of digital and entrepreneurial skills in agriculture, with Nikos Apostolopoulos. Four countries, four languages, four education systems, and one question: how do you compare them?

More than half of the people who work in the European bioeconomy work in agriculture. So what do farmers, agronomists, consultants and policy makers need to learn to be part of that change? A team from Greece, Italy, Portugal and Sweden asked them, using two European Commission frameworks as a common language: DigComp for digital skills and EntreComp for entrepreneurial skills.

I talk with Nikolaos (Nikos) Apostolopoulos, Associate Professor in European Policies in Sustainability, Development and Entrepreneurship at the University of the Peloponnese, where he directs the Laboratory of European Sustainable Development Policies. He is one of the authors of the study, published in 2025 in the journal Agriculture. This episode is not only about the results, but about what the paper does not show.

In this episode:

• Why DigComp and EntreComp were a tool, not the object of study, and why they work together.
• The "hybrid" competence profile: the same person reads data from a sensor and sees value in agricultural waste.
• What did not go to plan: an unbalanced sample, only three Swedish farmers, and the sentence the team decided not to write.
• How to coordinate a European project: clear ownership of tasks, common tools and trust in local partners.
• The core dilemma of any multi-country study: how much do you standardize, and how much do you adapt?
• From the paper: 71% of respondents had no bioeconomy course in their latest qualification, and only one in three was willing to pay for that training.
• Advice for starters: do not spend five years writing another list of competencies. Study which skills matter for whom, how they combine in real decisions, and who trains the trainers.

Recorded asynchronously: Nikos recorded his answers in Greece, and I recorded my questions separately.

Guest:
Nikos Apostolopoulos, University of the Peloponnese
Email: anikos@uop.gr
Profile: https://www.uop.gr/en/staff-memberen/anikos

Read the paper (open access): Digital and Entrepreneurial Competencies for the Bioeconomy: Perceptions and Training Needs of Agricultural Professionals in Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Sweden (Agriculture, 2025): https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture15101106

Chapters:
00:00 Intro: why this matters beyond agriculture
04:41 Before the paper: choosing DigComp and EntreComp
14:30 The hybrid competence profile
16:18 What did not go to plan: an unbalanced sample
23:47 Coordinating a project across four countries
32:49 Standardize or adapt: the core dilemma
37:32 Advice for starters: not another list of skills
44:44 Skill combinations and training the trainers
48:12 Outro: four ideas to take away

More: https://horacio-ps.com/en/principal-english
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