14th European Rural Development Network (ERDN) Conference, ‘Knowledge Sharing and Innovation in Agriculture and Rural Areas’
Budapest, Hungary, 3rd - 5th October 2016

 

The VALERIE workshop included a demonstration of the ask-Valerie.eu virtual adviser tool along with an introduction to the VALERIE project, the role of the VALERIE case studies and an invitation for feedback through working group sessions on how the project can best provide for and respond to the knowledge sharing and innovation situation in rural areas of Eastern Europe.

Paul Newell Price (ADAS, UK) opened the workshop and introduced each of the three speakers:

1. Hein ten Berge (Plant Research International, Wageningen, The Netherlands); “Boosting outreach of research for innovation in sustainable agriculture and forestry”.
2. Julie Ingram (Countryside and Community Research Institute, UK); “Integrating co-innovation into research translation: developing a stakeholder driven methodology”.
3. Peter M. Schuler (it-objects GmbH Germany); ask-Valerie.eu demonstration – How VALERIE will deliver knowledge across the farming and forestry supply chain.

The working group sessions addressed 5 key questions:

i. How do farmers and advisers in eastern central and south Eastern Europe currently access information for agricultural innovation and how is this likely to develop in the future?
ii. Who are the potential users of ask-Valerie.eu in eastern central and south Eastern Europe?
iii. How can ask-Valerie.eu be adapted to support knowledge sharing and interactive innovation in agriculture, forestry and rural areas in the region?
iv. How can we best promote the awareness and use of ask-Valerie.eu in eastern central and south Eastern Europe?
v. How can the uptake of results [in support of innovation] from national projects in eastern central and south Eastern Europe be improved?

Valuable discussions followed with conclusions summarized from the feedback by Paul Newell Price (ADAS, UK).

The presentations from the ERDN conference are available on the AKI (Research Institute of Agricultural Economics, Hungary) web-site: here