The agri-food and forestry sectors are under increasing pressure to adapt to climate change, consumer concern, technological and economic change, and complex global value chains. In turn, such challenges require that the necessary skills and competences are identified at various levels and within specific areas of the sectors. For that purpose, eleven focus groups in nine different EU-countries and two at EU-level were organized within the ERASMUS+ project “FIELDS” with the participation of farmers, cooperatives, agri-food companies, foresters, forest industries, advisors, and education providers to identify the skills needed in the agri-food and forestry sectors. The focus group participants identified business and strategic management skills, communication skills, and other skills related to sustainability, entrepreneurship, digital and soft skills to be most important for the agri-food and forestry sectors as a whole.

The agri-food and forestry sectors are in transition towards more sustainable, green, and innovative systems tackling several challenges posed by globalization, governance, and consumers’ demands. This transition to novel processes, markets, and businesses requires skills and competences to prepare the new generations and upskill the actual workforce. The purpose of this paper was to assess the skills and knowledge needs of future professionals in the agri-food and forestry sectors, from European stakeholders’ perspectives, by using a European questionnaire. Overall, respondents highlighted the importance of improving sustainability and soft and digital skills. In particular, food safety management and control; quality management and assurance of processes and product; efficient use of resources and organization; and planning, visioning, and strategic thinking skills ranked higher. In almost all countries, respondents had the perception that neither formal nor non-formal training covered training needs, though formal training was more suited to address education requirements. Both for organizations and individuals, it is far more relevant to have skills to perform than to have training recognition. The outcomes also provide findings that can be used to help develop updated curricula that meet the sector’s needs.

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The need to cultivate student competences to improve sustainability in agrifood systems is indisputable. This paper shows the example of an online student competition course in Sustainable Food for Master students based on action-learning principles and the five core competences of Observation, Participation, Dialogue, Visioning, and Reflection. The course ran three times from 2019-2022 and 85 students assessed themselves in these five competences by responding to 17 rating statements. Analyses revealed significant improvement in all competences except Participation after the course. Yet since Participation was highest rated before the course, rating of this competence was not less than other competences at the end. Practicing these five core competences and integrating competency self-assessments into educational activities can contribute to a paradigm shift in education that fosters the cultivation of competences for sustainability and that may be applicable to other courses.

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