First FRAMEwork Annual Meeting

The project's 2021 Annual Meeting and General Assembly is held virtually...

The H2020 FRAMEwork project's first Annual Meeting and General Assembly recently took place on September 29-30, 2021.

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Originally planned as an in-person gathering, the meeting was held virtually via the project's Microsoft Teams platform due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, with knowledge exchange partner Taskscape providing IT support and digital collaboration tools.

The meeting brought together consortium partners and advisory board members from across Europe for two intensive days of collaboration and strategic planning. The project's core mission of developing and implementing Advanced Farmer Clusters to enhance biodiversity-sensitive farming took center stage as participants navigated the complexities of remote collaboration.

Project coordinator Graham Begg from the James Hutton Institute welcomed participants on both days and closed out the event, acknowledging the challenges of running such a complex meeting virtually while expressing satisfaction with the level of engagement achieved.

"It's sometimes difficult to know how things will pan out... but I'm really pleased by the way it went," he reflected, "there's lots of information and planning here."

Day One: Setting the Foundation

The first day focused on Work Packages 3, 4, and 6, with participants splitting into virtual breakout rooms to tackle critical questions about stakeholder engagement, economic analyses, and data collection challenges. Miro boards were deployed to help enable remote collaboration and record keeping, despite the online-only format.

A key discussion point emerged around Work Package 6's economic surveys and experiments. Professor Stephanie Engel and her team identified significant challenges in coordinating data collection across multiple countries and clusters.

The meeting revealed this as a project-wide challenge requiring collective problem-solving rather than a single work package's responsibility. As Coordinator Graham Begg noted, this is an area where "we start talking about Taskscape's NASA mission analogies, and where we're hurtling down to Earth", emphasising the critical importance of resolving these coordination issues.

Day Two: Biodiversity Monitoring and Innovation

The second day shifted focus to the heart of the project – Work Packages 2 and 5, dealing with Advanced Farmer Clusters and biodiversity monitoring. John Holland of the Game and Wildlife Trust led discussions on the challenges and opportunities in establishing baseline monitoring across the project's eleven pilot clusters, spanning multiple countries.

A vigorous debate emerged about monitoring frequency, with consensus building around the need for annual monitoring despite resource constraints. Participants from geographically smaller clusters like those in the Czech Republic and larger ones in Estonia and the UK discussed tailored approaches to make monitoring feasible while maintaining scientific rigor. The overall sentiment became clear, that annual monitoring would overcome a lot of the problems, though time and resources remained a concern.

The afternoon brought a panel discussion on innovation, featuring contributions from external advisory board members Louise Amand, of Capitals Coalition and Vasileios Vasileiadis from Syngenta. The panel explored FRAMEwork's ambitious goal of piloting a "Biodiversity Sensitive Farming System" to provide a lasting legacy beyond the project's five-year timeline.

Working in the Shadow of COVID-19

Perhaps the most thought-provoking discussions centered on how the COVID-19 pandemic had reshaped the project's context and potentially its outcomes. The team recognised that the world had changed since the project proposal was written, and flexibility would be key to success.

Project Coordinator Graham Begg articulated the challenge: "Does it mean that actually what we'd already planned... remains relevant, or are there other things that we need to adjust because people's expectations and positions will have changed somehow?" The project committed to conducting a horizon-scanning exercise to ensure FRAMEwork remains relevant in a post-pandemic world. Project participants agreed, with Gitte Kragh, NORDECO, noting "I think we need to be ambitious and I think it is the right time to be... it's crucial we openly show evolutions in the project, sharing what we're working on and building"

A particularly exciting development was news shared by Gitte of potential government funding in Denmark that could expand Farmer Cluster approaches there – a sign of FRAMEwork's possible interlinkages already extending beyond the project's immediate participants.

Looking Ahead to Luxembourg and Beyond

The meeting's success was evident in the rich discussions captured across multiple breakout rooms, from detailed technical debates about monitoring protocols to strategic conversations about the project's impact and legacy.

Conversations concluded with plans for the next whole-project gathering in Luxembourg, hopefully in-person, scheduled for 2022. Knowledge exchange lead Alastair Simmons, Taskscape, and Project Manager Fanny Tran, Hutton, committed to leaving the collaborative Miro boards open for a week following the meeting to allow participants to add further thoughts and consolidate ideas that emerged during the real-time discussions.

Despite the challenges of remote participation, the meeting demonstrated remarkable engagement. Participants navigated technical set-ups, time zone differences, and the absence of informal corridor conversations that typically enrich in-person conferences. Yet, the virtual format also enabled broader participation and creative solutions, including the recording of content for future uses, including blogs like this, and the deployment of digital collaboration tools.

As FRAMEwork moves forward, the insights gained from this virtual gathering will help shape its trajectory. The project's ambition – to pilot not just research – remains intact. The challenge now lies in maintaining momentum, resolving practical challenges identified, and ensuring that innovations developed truly benefit both farmers and biodiversity stakeholders across Europe.

The meeting closed with a reminder of the project's scale and responsibility. As the project's Deputy Coordinator Benedetto Rugani, of LIST, emphasised, "the EU has given us 8 million euros to tackle a big question." With such investment comes the obligation to try and evolve with a changing world and new circumstances over the project's five years, pandemic or not.

The H2020 FRAMEwork project (2020-2025) is funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. It aims to develop and pilot farmer clusters for biodiversity-sensitive farming across Europe, creating lasting systems thinking learnings for Europe's green transition.