The UK team chose to use an existing event attended by relevant stakeholders to disseminate MIXED findings at the national level. SAOS kindly offered th UK team an opportunity to present their findings in poster format at their annual conference entitled “Managing Risk, Building Resilience, Reaping Rewards”.  The agenda for the meeting can be found in the picture below. The MIXED team were able to interact with conference attendees before the official agenda commenced and during coffee and lunch breaks. Three posters were prepared in advance of the meeting (picture 2) to initiate discussions with the UK MIXED team in attendance (Fergus Younger (SAOS), Kairsty Topp (SRUC), Pip Nicholas-Davies (Aberystwyth University) (picture 3). 

The posters presented and discussed at this meeting focussed on three specific areas of research from MIXED: 

1. Winter grazing of cereals by sheep – results of the field trials conducted by SRUC as part of work package 2. 

2. The outcomes of the Scottish farmer network activities conducted as part of work package 1. 

3. The methodology used in work package 2 and how it could be developed to result in better participatory learning activity for farmer networks. 

These three areas were focussed on as they follow an evolutionary pathway of mixed farming development within MIXED in the Scottish context.   

• The field trials conducted at SRUC in work package 2 clearly showed that from a technical perspective, grazing winter cereals with sheep significant benefits were achievable. Discussions with participants recognised the carbon benefits of utilising a currently un-utilised feed resource but many were interested in how these types of collaborative mixed farming systems could work in practice (e.g. identifying and maintaining suitable collaborative arrangements. 

• The participatory trials with the network of farmers focussed on the practicalities of grazing a broader range of winter cover crops to generate crop, animal and environmental benefits.  Technical challenges such as choice of crops species mix, germination/persistence and grazing time were identified and solutions proposed/conclusions drawn. Social issues such as arable farmers finding the collaboration more challenging than livestock farmers, especially when specific cover crops needed to be sown rather than simply grazing winter cereals, were highlighted. 

• The benefits and disadvantages of the reflective learning methodology were presented. Whilst within network knowledge development was successful, the ability for cross network sharing was limited in MIXED due to the diversity of mixed farming types and the geographic spread and project funding limiting physical interactions between networks.  The Scottish and French networks were 2 of the few that experienced farmer exchange, albeit one way, and the benefits of that were significant for those involved. These lessons are important for the future use of this methodology in research projects. 

Individual discussions with stakeholders at the conference focussed on how collaboration between specialised farmers might be facilitated (the network we worked with in MIXED is a good example of how it could be done) and the fact that climate does not appear to be high on the agenda in supply chains (apparent from presentations at the conference) and therefore, leveraging the market place to reward farmers for delivering environmental goods from mixed farming is currently not a viable option. Government support payments for the delivery of environmental goods could be an option but due to the long-term nature of the delivery of environmental goods from mixed farming, particularly through soil improvements, little data has been collected to evidence benefits. Despite this current lack of a framework to “reward” farmers for the delivery of environmental goods, it was recognised that from the evidence collected in the project, that there may be good financial justification for farmers to implement the likes of winter cereal grazing and with a bit more refining of optimum species mixes, other winter cover crop grazing as well. The carbon footprint benefits of grazing currently un-utilized feed sources alone (as highlighted in work package 5) may be a good incentive for farmers to implement winter cereal/cover crop grazing practices.