Sharing Focus Group results, a Portuguese example

The Portuguese National Rural Network (NRN) organised a workshop in December to enhance and give continuity to the work of the EIP-AGRI Focus Groups (FG) at national level in Portugal.

The Portuguese NRN believes that the FG outcomes are relevant and important to the agriculture and forestry sectors in Portugal. The NRN had already been translating FG publications and disseminating the results via a number of different communication channels. But they were interested in developing their activities further and at the same time they wanted to explore the added value of the Portuguese participants in the EIP-AGRI Focus Groups.

So the NRN organised a workshop on 11 December 2015 in Lisbon. All the Portuguese Focus Group experts were invited, as well as other relevant stakeholders. They were looking for answers to the following set of questions:

1. How to process and disseminate the results of EIP-AGRI FGs nationally in order to achieve more involvement of different target groups of stakeholders, particularly farmers?
2. How to continue the work carried out and the experience acquired with the EIP-AGRI FGs?
3. What role can the Portuguese NRN play?

The presentations and interactive sessions led to the following conclusions and decisions:

Question 1: Disseminating results

Whenever a FG report is published, work would be carried out with the Portuguese participant(s) to:

• Reflect on the FG results and adjust them to the PT needs, while identifying possible next steps
• Identify stakeholder groups according to the type of information in the FG final report
• Adapt message(s) from the final report to those target groups
• Identify communication instruments/activities for stakeholder group (seminars, translated documents, visits, etc.)
• Involve specific types of stakeholders (education and training, policy makers, national authorities, ...)

Question 2: Continuing work on the FG themes

Several activities were identified such as organising thematic groups within the NRN, this could be specific thematic meetings or national Focus Groups could be set up involving the Portuguese experts from the EIP-AGRI Focus Groups and other stakeholders. Partners in Operational Groups could take part in these national groups, and they could also be linked to other cooperation projects such as Horizon 2020 projects.

Question 3: Role of the NRN

Regarding the role that the NRN may have, it was concluded that it can act as a facilitator to promote stakeholder involvement and can contribute to the further development and dissemination of EIP-AGRI FG results.

For example, the Portuguese NRN is already working with an informal discussion group on how they could further continue the work of the EIP-AGRI FG on Soil Organic Matter Content in Mediterranean Regions. “This group started about 15 years ago and it included a small group of farmers, a researcher from a university and a farm machinery enterprise. The farmers involved have been trying out experimental techniques on their farms in collaboration with the other members, putting into practice the concept of conservation agriculture, exchanging experiences and learning from one other. We attended their meeting to see how it is feasible to work further on the Focus Group results” Said Custódia Correia from the Portuguese NRN.

They have also made a video about the Focus Group on water (in Portuguese) where one of the FG experts answers the following questions:

• What was the added value of participating in the FG?
• What were the results?
• How to get these results to farmers?
• How to motivate experts to participate in FGs?
• Which could be the follow ups to your participation in the FG?

Contact

Custódia Correia: rederuralnacional@dgadr.pt

Photos: Portuguese National Rural Network

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