27^th-28^th October 2020

Braving local lockdowns, Tier 3 restrictions and soaring coronavirus infection rates (Belgium being the highest in EU, 2,801.59 cases per 100,000 people), SHui’s researchers gathered on a new online platform (CSIC’s CONECTA) to discuss recent progress and collaborations with SHui. Despite the challenges of the summer, a number of high points emerged from the discussions:

• Chinese researchers are now able to conduct face-to-face focus groups with farmers
• BOKU outlined database visualisation plans to enhance user friendliness
• Interactions between crop / landscape models with remote sensing inputs
• Recruitment of a “front-end specialist” by ARO to ensure Decision Support tools are farmer-accessible
• Recruitment of a new Community Manager to enhance our stakeholder engagement

SHui partners also participated in an interactive survey to identify a way forward for SHui farmer engagement.