During 5th and 6th of July, the 4th general meeting of Agridemo-F2F is taking place in Chania (Greece). The event will be hosted by the Agricultural University of Athens and held back to back with 13th European Farming Systems Symposium (IFSA).
To have a clear view of the objectives for this meeting, it’s necessary to look back at the work carried out within the frame of the project during the past six months. First, three Supra-regional meetings took place to present and discuss preliminary results of the inventory carried out in 2017. Then, within the inventoried farms, partners have selected a sample of 3-4 case-studies per country, which are currently being addressed. Thus, during this period Agridemo and Plaid project are attending demonstrations by the selected farms, so as deepen on how peer to peer learning takes place and find out what makes possible the effective learning at farm demonstrations. Finally, partners have been working in the development of the FarmDemo Hub, turning the geo-referenced inventory into an interactive tool devoted to farms and farmers engaging at demonstration activities.
These activities lead to an agenda for Chania structured in four main blocks. First point will be the evaluation of the progress on the case-studies and the followed approach (updating the methodology, if necessary) and to present preliminary results available.
Next item will be the preparation of the analysis of such case-studies, to be carried out during autumn 2018, once the recompilation of data from the demonstrations is concluded. Therefore, at this meeting partners will explore the approach, prepare the roadmap for the study and will become familiar with the methodology to be followed.
Another key issue will be to set the main goals for the final year of AgriDemo-F2F: what do we need to achieve and how we will do so. Ultimate ambition is to build up an interactive FarmDemo community so, in Chania, Agridemo will also point out key actors and discuss how can we engage them to become this community true.
And that will lead partners to the last issue in the agenda: The communication and dissemination activities. Partners will discuss about tools (namely FarmDemo Hub), resources, stakeholders and activities that will help us to meet our goals.
In parallel to the meeting, the 13th European Farming Systems Symposium (IFSA) is taking place in Chania as well, and Agridemo partners are actively participating, presenting some works and leading some sessions related to the Theme 1 of the programme (“Learning and knowledge systems, education, extension and advisory services”).