New CORE Organic Cofund projects presented at Research Seminar in Bari, Italy
All coordinators of the twelve CORE Organic Cofund research projects, funding bodies and stakeholder representatives as well as international guests from Mediterranean countries and Brazil met at CORE Organic events in the end of January. The Research Seminar was hosted by TP Organics and the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Bari (CIHEAM Bari) and arranged back-to-back with an Outreach Seminar where scientific exchange and establishing of new international partnerships were at the focus.
The twelve projects covering the areas of plant production systems, livestock systems, local feed production and organic food processing were initially introduced by the CORE Organic Cofund Monitoring team (see presentation: Introduction to the CORE Organic and research projects). The next part of the meeting was arranged as a ‘Science Bazar', a posters session in which project coordinators presented and discussed their research to small groups of participants.
– The direct exchange among the partners will ensure the CORE Organic programme continuity and research excellence, said the Core Organic Coordinator Ivana Trkulja.
During the meeting there were also workshops and presentations on different aspects and channels for research communication and dissemination (see presentations: Communication and dissemination in CORE Organic and Dissemination plans).
Keynote on agroecology scenario for European food and farming
As an ‘encore’ on the Research Seminar there was an inspirational key-note speech by the researcher Xavier Poux about the project TYFA – Ten Years for Agroecology. TYFA has so far worked with scenario modelling for a European agriculture built on agroecology with regional fertilization management, pesticide-free farming with organic farming as the reference model, redeployment of grassland areas and extensive livestock management, measures which also should lead to healthy and sustainable diets and be based on the principle ‘food first, then feed, then biodiversity, then non-food use’ (see presentation: Ten Years for Agroecology in Europe - Transition pathways towards a sustainable European food system and the recent report from project).
The next day: Outreach Seminar to widen future cooperation
The CORE Organic Cofund network aims at enlarging its geographical scope and establishing new partnerships with Mediterranean countries and Brazil in the context of scientific exchange and research projects supporting organic food and farming sector. The CORE Organic and international funding partners from Algeria, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia and Brazil discussed instruments that can ensure long-term knowledge exchange mechanisms, encompassing mutual exchange of researchers, organization of scientific dissemination events and participation in the joint calls supporting research in organic food and farming. There was a general commitment among all the funding partners towards knowledge exchange and pursuing of the future cooperation within the CORE Organic programme frame.
Photo: Thomas Alföldi, FiBL.
Read more about the CORE Organic Cofund projects
