The second workshop of the Portuguese RAIN was held on the 24th of January 2024, in School of Agriculture of the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança (IPB). A total of 20 participants attended the meeting of Portuguese RAIN, including farmers, researchers, multipliers and advisors.
The event started with a brief presentation of the main objectives and contents of the dissemination plan of AF4EU. A interactive session with Mentimeter collected preferences on the format and content in the materials that will be developed. They discussed mainly practice abstracts, fact sheets, infographics, technical articles and innovation tutorials.
After that, in a advisory session, the Portuguese RAIN added modules 8 – Handling Changes / Change Management, 14 – Advising and Supporting Businesses in Strategic Issues, and 16 – Shaping Innovation Processes – Supporting networks, as they deemed these also prioritized for local reality for the improvement and development of agroforestry system business models.
Finally, a business models session closed the event, selecting the business models that served as examples of agroforestry systems, was the highlight of the meeting. The enriching exchange of knowledge and ideas provided a good insight into the business models developed in this region of Portugal, highlighting the difficulties faced, which led to an extensive debate and proposals from the actors on how to solve the problems of marketing and valorization of what is produced. Additionally, it also promoted the merging of innovative ideas for agroforestry systems, considering the technical-scientific knowledge of multipliers, advisors, and researchers, with concrete actions proposed by producers with local knowledge.
