The third workshop of the Slovak RAIN was held on 26th of June 2024, organized by the National Forest Centre (NFC) team, led by Michal Pástor.
The meeting took place at the main facility of the National Forest Centre in Zvolen with active participation of 20 actors from which 45 % were practitioners (farmers/foresters) and 30 % advisors. There were stakeholders from almost all categories, including researchers, policy makers and retailers.
The workshop started with a first session of agroforestry consulting, focusing on the different modules associated with Slovakia and the validation of the protocol for the main extension services.
The second session presented different dissemination materials widely received among the participants. Members of the Slovak RAIN were active and helpful regarding collaboration on creating materials using concrete examples from their own farms and to suggest specific topics they wanted to see addressed.
In the following sessions, the main topics were the AF4EU Knowledge Platform and Agroforestry Business Models. A group exercise was done in order to detect shortages on a range of selected value chains in Europe. The value chain presented to the stakeholders in Slovakia were either recognized either as on-going and successful or as having with a huge potential (for example, milk goats, honey production or nuts). Stakeholders agreed to connect value chains with ecosystem services and agrotourism provision, which were mentioned in almost all farms.
There was also a presentation of the first design of the AFI-BUS DSS, encouraging participants to comment and give feedback on its usefulness and potential improvements. RAIN members considered them as visually appealing and ranked the possible social, environmental and economic indicators.
