RENOVATE gathers farmers and stakeholders across six European countries through its first round of Focus Groups
A co-creation environment to identify farmers’ training needs in crop protection, new technologies and EU regulatory compliance
Since October 2024 and throughout 2025, the RENOVATE project organised the first round of its Focus Groups across six European countries — Portugal, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium and Poland — bringing together more than 170 stakeholders from across the agricultural value chain, including farmers, advisors, trainers, researchers, agricultural services, confederations, machinery manufacturers and crop protection industry representatives. Each national session was coordinated by the corresponding RENOVATE partner and structured around a shared methodological framework, ensuring that the conclusions could be compared and consolidated at European level.
The first Focus Group took place in October 2024 in Lisbon, Portugal, and was followed by Italy in December 2024 in Grugliasco (Piedmont), in a hybrid format combining online plenary sessions with offline group discussions. Spain hosted its session in December 2024 in Zaragoza, while France organised two complementary sessions in January 2025 in Bordeaux and Gruissan. Belgium organised its Focus Group online in February 2025, coordinated from Sint-Truiden, and the cycle was completed by Poland with an online session in March 2025. Together, the six sessions gathered more than 170 attendees, including farmers, advisors, trainers, researchers, regulatory authorities, confederations and industry representatives.
Defined under Task 1.4 of the project, these Focus Groups aimed to identify the training needs of farmers, with particular attention to young farmers, women and family-sized farms, in relation to the application of plant protection products and the adoption of new technologies. Through a participatory and collaborative process, RENOVATE sought to understand the challenges farmers face in complying with EU legislation, to map gaps in the existing training offer and to gather concrete inputs to guide the development of the project’s interactive training platform and complementary tools.
Figure 1 — Examples of the illustrated discussion cards and notes used during the RENOVATE Focus Groups (Co-Creation methodology), in local language addressed to local stakeholders.
The outcomes of these first sessions are now being consolidated into a cross-country analysis that will directly inform the design of RENOVATE’s training contents and digital platform.
The next round of Focus Groups (Session 2) will revisit each country to evaluate the tools and materials developed on this basis, continuing the co-creation journey with the same stakeholder communities.
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Funded by the European Union under Grant Agreement 101134024. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the REA can be held responsible for them.
