A multi-stakeholder approach to discuss agroecological challenges in grazing-based systems

Within the project Grazing4AgroEcology, 31 Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System (AKIS) meetings were held in eight European countries. The aim was to discuss the possibilities and limitations to adopting the best-practices captured. These multi-stakeholder AKIS meetings were moderated by trained facilitators using pre-defined methods. A two-step process was carried out: 1) identifying and prioritising the most relevant challenges and innovations at country level, 2) discussing them to co-create solutions to improve the current state and to identify associated policies, both on national and international level. The most mentioned challenges were knowledge transfer and best practices exchange on manure management, technical grazing challenges, the mindset of stakeholders, biodiversity and animal health. The facilitators evaluated the meetings through a structured questionnaire. In general, the meetings were positively assessed. These findings indicate that a suitable methodological approach was applied to facilitate discussion and co-creation.