Diagnosis of the agricultural information, training and advice system in Bulgaria

Despite the great theoretical and practical significance, in Bulgaria there are no comprehensive analysis of the state and evolution of the system of agricultural information, training and advices in Bulgaria. The goal of this paper is to analyze the state and evolution of the system of agricultural information, training and advices in Bulgaria during the period after country’s EU accession, identify major trends in that area, make a comparison with other EU states, specify main problems, and suggest conclusions for improvement of policies during next programing period. The analysis has found out that in years after accession of the country to EU the number of the farm managers who undertook full agricultural training increases, but despite that almost 93% of them are still with practical experiences and without any agricultural training. The extent of participation of rural areas rests weak and constantly decreasing, and Bulgaria is among the last in EU in hours of formal and informal education and training. In years of EU membership the number of provided consultations is doubled and in recent years 17% of all registered agricultural producers and each tenth farmer in the country are consulted while the subjects of provided consultation widened. Also hundreds of events associated with knowledge and innovation transfer and sharing are organized as most of them are jointly organized by the National Advisory Service with the institutes of Agricultural Academy, agrarian and other universities, research and development organizations. The number of organized events, the overall number of participants, and the average number of participant per event tend to decrease.