Although not ideal, it was decided to have the annual project meeting on-line and not as a physical meeting. COVID-19 was (and still is) affecting mobility in many countries and several of the MIXED partners would not be able to travel. So - from Monday morning to Thursday at noon (13-16 September) - the MIXED consortium ‘zoomed in’ to review, and discuss results and challenges, and to plan the next steps of MIXED in detail.

Coordinator, Tommy Dalgaard says: ‘We have learned to deal with the situation, with meetings and networking taking place on-line, but we are looking much forward to be able to meet and to strengthen the close relationship, trust and understanding through face-to-faces meetings with the networks of farmers, within the national teams, and with all the MIXED colleagues in general’.

At the meeting, he stated that he was proud of all partners in the MIXED team because the project has maintained momentum and performed as planned. However, he also stressed there might be situations in the future where we will have to be innovative and flexible to be able to implement the high level of field activities and multi-actor participation that is fundamental in the project.

Fortunately, things are improving and it has recently been possible to have physical meetings with the majority of the farmer networks.

Some of the major achievements and important milestones that has been completed in the first year of the project are the development of the Framework for efficiency and resilience assessment of MiFAS, the Handbook of indicators for efficiency and resilience, the Data management plan, and a Literature study and review of relevant research projects (for MIXED) as well as a range of workshops with stakeholders and farmers.