After several weeks of intense dissemination of the 1st PT RAIN meeting, a total of 30 RAIN members attended the 1st Portuguese meeting, that took place on the 12th of September, at the Observatório do Sobreiro e da Cortiça in Coruche.
Joana Amaral Paulo (the Innovation Broker) and João Palma from ISA chaired the meeting and discussion groups.
30 RAIN members attended the meeting, which started with the presentation of the project, objectives and RAIN concept.
During the meeting the participants were asked to identify bottlenecks/knowledge gaps and challenges/innovations from agroforestry systems covering silvopastoral, silvoarable and tree hedgerows systems. At a first stage this task was carried out in groups, and at a second stage the topics were summarized, presented by the chairs and discussed between all the participants.
The current decrease of pastoral activities and consequent increase of understory biomass associated to fire risk increase, the lack of human labour availability (e.g. shepherd) and the small size of the farms were some of the bottlenecks listed. On the other hand, ideas and examples for tree regeneration protection and promotion from animal grazing and for the increase in the diversify of products were also identified.
Joana Amaral Paulo closed the meeting with information about the next steps.
The second meeting will take place in January 2017, on a still to decide location.