The second workshop of the French RAIN was held on 22 January 2024, organized by Ver de Terre Production, taking place at the farm “des Pâtures”, in Orvaux. A total of 19 actors attended the RAIN meeting, there were among them farmers, advisors, multipliers and researchers.
During the first intervention, the Knowledge Platform was well judged for visual impact and ease of navigation by the stakeholders, but some features like a clearer map or titles have been highlighted. The general organization of the Dissemination Materials was carefully evaluated, deemed useful, with helpful suggestions from stakeholders to improve their impact, mainly associated with the improvement of written materials and liking mostly audiovisual materials.
On the advisory section, French RAIN identified the following CECRA modules as most interesting: Module 12, Advising and Supporting Groups and Teams ; Module 14, Advising and Supporting Businesses in Strategic Issues; Module 16, Shaping Innovation Processes, changing the decision done during the first RAIN but agrees with most other RAIN. The final business models session conducted to a selection of the 3 representative agroforestry farms of the French RAIN but also to the initial mapping of 3 innovative value chains of agroforestry products and services, capable of valorizing new local resources and combining productive and environmental ecosystem services: production of apple, pear and small fruits, combinated with the production of meat, production nuts.
The event concluded with a field visit of the Pâtures farm. Fields where the cattle graze on plots well defined by hedges was shown. It was explained that livestock (cows and sheep) graze for the majority of the year thanks to a dynamic rotating grazing system. A test plot where older trees were planted was shown as well, in order to find out if this could make tree planting beneficial more quickly, partly subsidized by the Normandy region.
