On Monday, 26 May, the organizing team gathered online via Webex to advance planning for the 2nd Stakeholder Retreat, scheduled for September 2025 as the next key stakeholder event in the series. This retreat builds on the two thematic webinars and the first in‑person retreat held in June 2024.
Key Focus Areas for the 2nd Retreat
- Baseline Scenarios: Refining the current ‘business as usual’ baseline and developing a compelling ‘challenging baseline’ alternative with clear motivations and credible assumptions.
- Stakeholder Feedback Integration: Reviewing inputs from previous online and in-person events to ensure participants’ insights guide scenario development.
- Credibility Check: Exploring whether the ‘challenging baseline’ provides a plausible alternative future, with clear, justified differences from the default scenario.
- Co-Creation of Pathways: Presenting, discussing, and collecting feedback on a set of alternative transition narratives—or “storylines”—that illustrate possible futures for the agri-food system.
This preparatory meeting ensures the retreat will be an interactive, stakeholder-driven forum, fostering a collective exploration of future scenarios and pathways. The project team looks forward to engaging deeper with partners and policymakers in September to co-develop transition strategies that are both aspirational and actionable.
Source: WSER, Thünen
