Our kick-off meeting (KoM) took place May 15th and 16th 2019, in Barcelona. This Informative event was the opportunity to discuss and plan our further activities and start exchanging experiences and knowledge on generation renewal, rural policies and social innovation.
The meeting brought together 36 participants, most of whom are members of RURALIZATION consortium and our project Advisory Board as well as the EC Policy Officer Alexia Rouby, from the DG Agriculture and Rural Development.
The meeting was structured in two intensive days. The first day, May 15th, started with a warmly welcome from the project coordinator, Willem Korthals Altes (TU Delft – Technology University of Delft), followed by a 5 minutes presentation for partners introduction. Then Astrid Guiffart, the EC Project Officer presented remotely an introduction to H2020 grant management. Afterwards, the EC Policy Officer Alexia Rouby contextualised RURALIZATION from a political point of view, offering suggestions of what was expected by the EC . The topic of the call refers to generational renewal and is a priority on the farming and rural policy agenda in addition of being also a policy objective of the current and future Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). As a matter of fact, generational renewal is one of the top nine objectives next to ensuring fair income, increasing competitiveness, rebalancing power in food chain, climate change action, environmental care, preserving landscape & biodiversity, creating vibrant rural areas and protecting food and health quality. The European Commission stresses the importance of creating knowledge on this topic as well as making robust and useful policy recommendations, based on a good selection of case studies illustrating the diversity of potential situations and from a comparison analysis. The project coordination team then made a deep introduction of the project and its vision as well as how the activities planned in the management work package (WP) were going to be undertaken. After the lunch break, the partners responsible of the tasks in WP3 made brief introductions to build the framework for research and innovation. Finally, the working day ended up with an excursion to an organic farm in the Collserola Natural Park.
The second day of KoM, May 16th, was devoted to present the rest of the work packages and discuss on the planned activities to be carried out. Ruralization activities on these WPs will focus on dissemination and exploitation of the project, its activities and results; foresight analysis to identify opportunities for rural regeneration,; facilitating rural newcomers and new entrants into farming; facilitating access to land; and a WP devoted to policy design and assessment.
Photos taken during the event are available in our gallery
