GREEN CARE
Green Care is adapted and quality-assured welfare services on the farm. The services will provide mastery, development and well-being. Farm is a property used for agriculture, forestry, or horticulture. The activities in the service offer are linked to the farm, life and work there.
Green Care in Norway is strongly linked to active agriculture and food production, which emerges from the definition. This was introduced around 2010.
The farm environment opens up many opportunities for activities, where care of animals and plants, management of the forest, maintenance of the cultural landscape, machines and buildings form the activity basis of Green Care. The goal of Green Care is primarily to make a positive contribution to the health, development and well-being of the individual user. The offers are based on collaboration with the upbringing, education, health or social sector, and include activities based on both the farm's and the farmer's resources.
Quality assurance and approval of Green Care
For the development of Green Care services and to ensure legitimacy and predictability, it has been necessary to work with standardization and quality assurance. In 2010, a quality system was therefore prepared for the farm as an arena for service production. The development work was done in a collaboration with the Norwegian Farmers' Union, the Norwegian Farmers' and Smallholders' Association, the Municipal Sector's interest and employer organization (KS), the insurance industry, the Agricultural HSE service, the Norwegian Food Foundation (Stiftelsen Norsk Mat) and representatives from the buyers.
The standard was developed within the existing system for Quality Assurance in Agriculture (KSL). It is now operated and further developed by the Norwegian Food Foundation. The use of the standard started in 2011. Based on the quality assurance, a separate approval scheme for Green Care was implemented in 2012. The approval is free for the farms and only approved farms may use the Green Care (Inn på tunet) logo.
The approval sets requirements for the farmers related to current legislation, personal suitability and safety on the farm as an arena. There is no requirement for formal competence to be approved as a Green Care provider. As of today, there are just under 400 approved Green Care farms in Norway. The complete overview can be found at the Norwegian Food Foundation. This page also contains guides for various service areas as well as news.Green Care Norway SA
Green Care services are financed through public or private customers purchasing the services from the farms. The absolute most common is that Green Care has customers from the public area.
This means that the farms must master marketing, sales and be able to participate in various tenders. Some tenders require more farms to work together to become competitive. Based on this, several farms in Norway have chosen to organize together to make a bigger impact and win the competition.
Green Care Norway (Inn på tunet Norge SA) (IPTN) is a farmer-owned cooperative with the purpose of safeguarding the owners' financial interests as providers of welfare services from agriculture. In addition, the cooperative is a development actor that, together with good partners, uses resources to make the use of Green Care visible and increase it. The member farms have chosen to enter as owners and developers of the cooperative because it serves their interests and contributes to achieve the desired result on their own farm. As a larger nationwide organization, IPTN has the opportunity to participate in competitions, tenders and projects that the farms individually do not have the opportunity to do.
IPTN does not have external operating support but have to and must finance its own activity. This is done through a distribution of Green Care turnover between the farm and the cooperative. It is the annual meeting of IPTN that adopts the financial model every year. IPTN is also developing a system for its own industry. Through a collaborative project with Landbrukets Dataflyt SA (the farmer`s digital road network), a document and storage solution has been developed that safeguards privacy and data security both for member farms and for the cooperative. These are good solutions, adapted to agriculture, which strengthen our competitiveness. The Norwegian Farmers' Union and the Norwegian Farmers' and Smallholders' Association, are both owners and participate in the development of the cooperative. The Norwegian Farmers` Unioin has for several years been a clear and active development player within the industry. The organization has 63,000 members in 515 local teams across the country. They work to improve the conditions for agriculture and make the importance of agriculture visible in society. The Norwegian Farmers` Union has recently developed a Green Care school (Inn på tunetskolen), an offer for new service providers.