Fruitful SOLID meeting in Granada

The annual SOLID meeting in Granada was a major step forward for SOLID towards the completion of the entire project. A very successful meeting, according to the overall project leader of SOLID, Nigel Scollan.

By Ulla Skovsbøl

For two days in May the elegant lobby and the shady conference rooms of Hotel Saray in Granada buzzed with intensive discussions on cows and goats, organic farming methods and low-input farming, breeding and feeding and milk production as about 50 agricultural scientists and stakeholders from most of the 10 EU countries involved in the SOLID project met for the 5th Annual Project and Stakeholder Platform Meeting.

The participants agreed that the scientific discussions in plenum as well as in smaller groups were fruitful, but also the excursions and the social events contributed to make the Granada-meeting a success.

“It was fantastic to have the privilege of visiting Granada for the 5th Annual Project meeting of SOLID.  The location was excellent and it was a delight to see so many of the “SOLID family” together. The meeting provided a forum for each of our work packages to update on progress and permit discussion with our stakeholders on implications of the research conducted,”  SOLID´s overall project leader Nigel Scollan, Aberystwyth University (UK), says.

Participatory research championed

The meeting in Granada was the penultimate meeting of SOLID and consequently rich in results presented across all the work packages. The discussions were focused on the implications of the research to the organic and low input dairy sectors at different levels, farm, policy and scientific and were rather useful, according to Nigel Scollan.

“In extension of the discussions in Granada it is also important to consider how results from any project fit in relation to other outputs from other EC and nationally funded research projects and emphasis was placed on these aspects in our meeting in Granada,” he adds.

Important discussions

In particular the session hosted by Niels Halberg (Denmark) and Raffaele Zanoli (Italy) on “implications of work” at the farm and policy end was excellent, according to Scollan, and other discussion points of great importance were “Innovation as Farmers´ Empowerment Tool”, “Sharing Information”, “No-one Size Fits All” and “Making European Dairying More Resilient.”

Furthermore, Scollan states it is important to note, that the discussions at the annual meeting also highlighted the fact that two different types of low-input farms exists alongside each other:  on one hand those who aim at low-input farming (input minimisers), and on the other those who have to be low-input farmers (input constrained).  Organic dairying may be either ”low-input” or “high-input” depending on the farmer´s situation, and within SOLID there are good examples of both.

Participatory research

While staying in Granada, the scientists even got the opportunity to visit an interesting goat farm, the Pérez family farm in the Andalusian countryside, which not only Scollan but probably all the visitors found excellent.

The Pérez family farm has been involved in the participatory research of SOLID and is a good example of useful cooperation between farmers and scientists.

“The SOLID project has championed participatory research and it is encouraging to note how this model is central to activity under Horizon 20:20 and the European Innovation Partnership on Agricultural Productivity and Sustainability,” Nigel Scollan says.

Final meeting in April 2016

The meeting in Granada was the last annual meeting in the project.

“As we are now in the final months of the project it was also good to note the increased emphasis on regional workshops to promote results and implications of our research.  The e-Learning platform in SOLID will also be developing in the final part of the project and will be an important legacy for SOLID,” he notes.

The regional workshops will be held during the autumn of 2015, and the only remaining joint activity of the project is now the final SOLID meeting which will be held in Brussels in January 2016. This 2-day meeting will focus on the final “headline” results and consider in some depth the major messages from four years of research and innovation by scientists, advisors and farmers from 25 partner institutions and organisations in ten different EU countries.

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