PPILOW National Practitioners Groups (NPGs) meetings 2024: innovation and knowledge exchange accomplished!

– by Monica Coletta, Martina Re and Laetitia Fauconnier (AIAB)

In the final year of the project all National Practitioners Groups (NPGs) were actively involved in the presentation of the outcomes of the project and participated in the dissemination activities. Great attention was dedicated to the results of the on-farm experiments which, together with the self-assessment tools, represent the readiest innovation to foster change in management supporting high levels of animal welfare in the pig and poultry organic and low-input production systems. In fact, innovation in agriculture relies not only on scientific results and technical expertise but also on the active involvement and feedback from a multiplicity of actors. In the PPILOW project, stakeholders’ feedback played a key role in shaping the trajectory of innovations and management practices. These stakeholders, including farmers, technical experts, and researchers, provided valuable insights that not only validated the experimental outcomes but also offered practical perspectives on feasibility, scalability, and sustainability.  Feedback served as a crucial bridge between experimental outcomes and real-world applicability. It enriched the understanding of challenges faced at farm level, identified implementation barriers, and highlighted opportunities for improvement.  NPGs also allowed further understanding of the specificities of organic and low-input production systems to be addressed at National level.

© all Photos AIAB

AIAB coordinated the activity of National Practitioner Groups established in seven European countries. Each NPG focused either on poultry (layers and broilers) or pigs. Belgium, France and Italy hosted two NPGs: one for pigs and one for poultry. Nine NPGs (poultry and pigs) were established, spread over seven countries (France, Italy, Germany, Romania, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark). The livelihood of the NPGs was possible thanks to facilitators who had the challenging role of guiding the co-creation process and keep a high level of engagement of the multi-actor groups ensuring that everybody had the possibility to participate and collecting the feedback for researchers and experts. Facilitation included the selection of on-farm trials that were implemented in all the seven countries and supported the refinement of the dissemination materials. Change in management of poultry and pig organic and low-input production systems is a complex matter and the interest expressed in the on-farm experiments bodes well for the future exploitation activities of the PPILOW project: thanks to the strong engagement of all the Consortium partners the participatory approach was made possible and stakeholders were active contributors to enhance animal welfare in organic and low-input production systems.