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A comprehensive training program for AMP exploitation

Sideritis essential oil produced by our school
Type of data: 
Good practice
Source: 
Personal communication outside INCREDIBLE events
Objective: 

During the last years there has been a growing interest from young people to get involved in the AMP exploitation business. The rich Greek flora and the plenty of abandoned agricultural fields in rural areas offer a great potential in this direction. However, most of the young farmers/entrepreneurs didn’t have a relative experience in the field and there has been many fails and disappointments.

Context: 

The Hellenic Manpower Organization organise a comprehensive training program,  designed for people that want to get involved in AMP exploitation business. The program is mainly addressed to people that come from the rural areas and is carried out in cooperation with local authorities. The main topics covered are:

  1. Cultivation
  2. Collection and processing
  3. Legislation and certification
  4. Business plan development – marketing
  5. E-commerce

Local authorities are responsible to grant the young farmers with public land for their first steps, as well as to provide them a proper place to sale their products.

Main results: 

Upon the completion of the program, the participants will be trained on most things that has to do with AMP exploitation, such us cultivation and processing, legislation and certification and marketing. The total duration of the program is 295 hours. The training program started at 2016 and until now there have been completed 5 sessions in total in different regions. Until now, the training program have been completed by 70 people out of the 125 initial participants. Many of them already run their own business in the field.

Main practical recommendations: 

Aromatic and Medicinal Plants exploitation can offer many advantages for young people that want to enhance their profit or have an alternative basic way of income. However, the lack of knowledge in certain topics can lead to bad results. We encourage people to participate in schools and training projects like the one we organize. 

Impacts and weaknesses: 

According to our experience and estimations, the aromatic and medicinal plants exploitation can have a strong positive impact on local societies and the rural development, as it can offer high yields with very low costs of production. The basic problem is the lack of knowledge and/or proper organization, a thing that can only be solved by continuous training and information.

Future developments: 

Following the successful completion of the first five cycles of training, the Hellenic Manpower Organization has already started three more training sessions in different regions. By this year we are also going to start more schools in several topics regarding the agricultural and rural development.

Organisation: 
Hellenic Manpower Organization
Contacts: 

Argyrios Kyrkos, kek.ioannina@oaed.gr, www.oaed.gr

Anna Tsogka, kek.ioannina@oaed.gr, www.oaed.gr

Figure 1 credit: 

Hellenic Manpower Organization

Figure 2: 
Demonstration of essential oil distillation
Figure 2 caption and credit: 

Demonstration of essential oil distillation