Keynote speakers
Alexandra Köves European Society of Ecological Economics
Alexandra Köves is an ecological economist, associate professor at the Corvinus University of Budapest in the Department of Decision Sciences within the Institute of Operations and Decision Sciences. She is also vice-president of the European Society of Ecological Economics.
Ibolya Sáfián Lászlóné shepherd, Hungarian Women Herders group
Ibolya was born into a shepherd family, but started active shepherding with her husband in 1989. She is founding leader of the Hungarian Women Herders group.
Attila Szőcs Boruss, Eco Ruralis, Romania
Szőcs is a passionate advocate for agroecology and improved legislation in support of peasants’ rights and access to land. As a leading campaigner for raising awareness of land grabbing in Romania, he has served as President of the Eco Ruralis Association
Pablo Tittonell, Groningen University, CIRAD
Pablo Tittonell is an agronomist by training who worked both in the private sector and in academic/research organisations. He holds a PhD in Production Ecology and Resource Conservation from Wageningen University and his areas of expertise include agroecology, soil fertility, biodiversity and systems analysis.
WORKSHOP ORGANISErs
WORKSHOP 1: 2024 European elections: how can agroecology become the next paradigm of European agricultural and food policies?
The outcome of the 2024 European elections will pave the way to the next European Commission and future 5-year policy plans of the European Union. What is the political process that will shape the next CAP? Where and how can agroecological voices be heard throughout this year of political and institutional changes? The 2019 elections led to the EU Green Deal and subsequently to the EU Farm to Fork strategy. What more can we hope and dream for so agroecology becomes the new paradigm for European agricultural and food policies ?
laurence modrego
WORKSHOP 2: Valuing underutilised crops and wild plants for agroecological transitions
In this workshop, we create space for discussing the potential roles played by underutilised crops and wild gathered plants for agroecological transitions towards diverse and resilient agroecosystems. We first show the contributions of underutilised crops and wild species to the diversification and preservation of agrobiodiversity, provision of ecosystem services, valorisation of biocultural diversity, diversification of diets, enhancement of social sustainability, resilience of local communities and development of alternative food networks. Moreover, we highlight the agronomic, social, political and economic challenges and lock-ins that characterise the cultivation of underutilised crops, the gathering of wild plants and the development of related practices. In the second part of the workshop small group discussions address local best practices and distill recommendations to overcome existing challenges.
Chiara Flora Bassignana
Chiara Flora Bassignana is a researcher fellow at the University of Gastronomic Sciences of Pollenzo, in the Agroecology group. Her research interests revolve around agroecology, biocultural diversity with a particular focus on mountainous areas, new ruralisms and commons. She holds a PhD in Ecogastronomy, Education and Society from the University of Gastronomic Sciences of Pollenzo.
Christoph Schunko
Christoph Schunko is assistant professor at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna. His research focuses on local knowledge about wild plant gathering in organic farming and beyond. This includes research about the biocultural diversity of wild plant uses, value chains of (organic) wild plant products, ecological and socio-political sustainability of (organic) wild plant gathering, cultivation and domestication of wild plants.
workshop 3: Past, present, and future of soil health by applying agroecological practices
Four PhD students and researchers in agroecology, soil sciences, and water management are going to discuss agroecological practices that improve soil health such as soil inoculation (applying microbes), good practices to avoid soil degradation and erosion, soil management, no-tillage practices, water management and agroecology, animal and human health, social aspect and climate change mitigation.
Jana Marjanović
Jana Marjanović is a Environmental researcher with a specialization in applied Ecology. She is currently a PhD Student at Doctoral School of Environmental Sciences at MATE University. Sje is currently working in energy procurement and sustainability business. Her research areas of interest are renewable energy and the application of sustainable practices in agriculture and agroecology.
workshop 4: Challenges and opportunities in self-organized local food provisioning systems: investigating scaling, balance, energy, and solidarity in food communities
Together we will discuss the processes for establishing and maintaining local food system offerings, the pros and cons of different models, and building trust which nurtures enthusiastic consumers while remaining viable for farmers. Central questions on the theme are: what are the practices which have drawn in consumers? What are the realistic capacities for farmers to serve as producers, educators and advocates? What are the challenges associated with maintain enthusiasm within local food schemes? What is the optimal balance of solidarity and/or transactional relationships with food consumers, and how much is it possible to build mutually supporting communities?
José Luis Vicente-Vicente
Logan Strenchock
Matthew Hayes
Dr. José Luis Vicente-Vicente is a postdoctoral researcher focused on assessing social-ecological impacts in alternative food networks. He has been focused on integrating agroecology and spatial food modelling, currently working on the development of agroecology-based local agri-food systems.
Logan Strenchock has been a garden team member at Zsámboki Biokert since 2012, is a Co-Founder of Cargonomia, and the Environmental and Sustainability Officer at Central European University (CEU). He is the president of the Open Garden Foundation and helps coordinate educational outreach programs in coordination with Cargonomia and Zsamboki Biokert team members. He is a member of the Hungarian Agroecology Network and enjoys getting his hands dirty in mixing research and practice in degrowth-inspired experimentation.
Matthew Hayes started out in organic farming in 1984, on a large biodynamic farm in England. He has worked in several countries as an organic vegetable grower, and since 1995 settled in Hungary. For many years he was the farm manager of the organic student farm at Szent István Universtiy, Gödöllő, and was the founding director of Nyitott Kert Alapítvány (Open Garden Foundation), an early promoter of local organic food systems in the CEE region. Matthew, together with friends, set up Zsámboki Biokert in 2011, where he is the overall manager. Matthew tries to promote farmer-to-farmer knowledge sharing.
WORKSHOP 5: Commons, commoners, and food sovereignty: land governance to scale agroecology out and up
The competition for land in Europe is tight, the entrenched cultural norms around resource distribution places private property at the heart of legal systems, obscuring if not directly contradicting human rights values. Against this backdrop, historical land commons particular for Eastern European countries and emerging commoning strategies in Western European countries offer practical approaches to realise land sovereignty. The objectives of this workshop are to highlight diversity of land commons institutions and pre-socialist legacies, discuss contemporary challenges in governing the commons, discuss the importance of land commons for an agroecological transition in Europe, starting from the Romanian case and to explore how land commons and commoning strategies contribute to the democratisation of land in Europe. The underlying assumption that private property is an obstacle in the realisation of an agroecological future opens the discussion on possible alternative property regimes and as a prerequisite for alternative food systems to emerge.
Ana-Maria Gătejel
Ana-Maria Gătejel is a member of EcoRuralis since 2022 active in the Rights to Land working group. So far, her contributions consisted of an independent research on the governance of common lands in Romania. Currently, she has a position as a research assistant in the CULTIVATE project at Wageningen University & Research (Rural Sociology Group). Her current work focuses on studying citizen engagement strategies in food sharing. Previously, she followed a MSc in Governance of Sustainability at Leiden University and obtained a BSc in European Studies at The Hague University of Applied Sciences.
Workshop 6: Living Labs
Diverse stakeholders including academics, governmental researchers, policy makers and practitioners, among others, are invited to submit outlines for short impulse on the proposed theme. We would to establish state-of-the-art of LL in EU, share lessons learned from case studies and address challenges facing the european agroecological living lab community. The aim is to generate dialogue among stakeholders, provide a platform for sharing innovative ideas, and create an inspiring space for collaboration and action.
PAOLA MIGLIORINI
Paola Migliorini is an agroecologist expert and activist. She is convenor of the Master in Agroecology and Food Sovereignty, Course Leader in Agroecology, Sustainable and Organic Agriculture, Coordinator of Agroecology research group with 13 projects. She is the former President of Agroecology Europe (2018-2022) and scientific referent of H2020 AGROMIX project. She is author of 100 technical and scientific publications.
Miloš Rajković
Miloš Rajković is a Research associate at the Institute of Field and Vegetable Crops, National institute of the Republic of Serbia.
WORKSHOP 7: Territorial approaches to the agroecological transition
In this collaborative workshop, the audience will learn about different territorial approaches to the agroecological transition and explore some of the most pressing challenges that emerge while steering agroecologic initiatives on the ground, as well as discuss potential solutions.
María Ramos García
Verónica Rebollo Díaz
Perrine Vandenbroucke
Agronomist specialised in biodiversity and agroecology, linked to the spanish agroecological movement for over 20 years. She is currently working as a researcher at the Center for Organic and Mountain Agriculture in CICYTEX (Regional Farming Research Center in Extremadura, Spain) and collaborates with Alimentta as founding member since 2019.
Veronica is a Project Technician at the think-tank Alimentta. She is a biologist with specialisation in sustainable management of the environment and training in social and cultural anthropology. For the last seven years, she has been devoted to the formulation and coordination of projects linked to the field of sustainability from a social perspective, including the set-up of multi-cultural networks and knowledge exchange processes.
Dr Perrine Vandenbroucke is Associate professor of Geography at ISARA. Her study focuses onrRelationships between agriculture and territories, agricultural and rural policies.
WORKSHOP 8: Agroecological approaches to the use of nutrients and the maintenance of soil health, with contrasting experiences from Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America, incorporating results of recent metanalyses
The recent aggression from Russia on Ukraine disrupted the crops nutrient supply. On one hand, it can potentially induce a crisis of reducing the supply of nutrients and therefore the yields. On the other hand, it opens the possibility to use different approaches for nutrient management in agriculture – organic sources, recycling, use of legumes, etc. How are farmers, organizations and regions are reacting on this needs to be better explored. The roundtable wants to bring together colleagues that can report from different regions about what is happening, and which are the agroecological strategies that ere being used.
MARCOS LANA
Marcos Lana is Secretary General of Agroecology Europe and Associate Professor at SLU. His work focuses on the use of crop models to assess the impact of climate change and agronomic management on crop performance, so as to propose suitable adaptation strategies concerning crop production systems and other ecosystem services. He is also involved with the development and adoption of agroecology as a tool to support sustainable farming systems.
WORKSHOP 9: Walking the agroecological path through feminism
Agroecology inherently encompasses a commitment to rethink unequal power dynamics in food systems, therefore the agroecological approaches cannot be discussed without addressing the power (im)balances based on gender and other axes of marginalisation that embed food systems and their actors and stakeholders. This workshop aims at creating a space for sharing perspectives, challenges and methods of studies in agroecology with a strong focus on gender and feminist dynamics involved in the research topic, methods and approaches. Contributions on how taking a feminist approach to agroecological transformation addresses the myriad ways in which gender intersects with all aspects of food systems, not just their social dimensions are welcomed. This workshop will also try to share answers and experiences on how agroecological perspectives meet feminist ones in building a research itself, regardless of the specific research questions and on how research materials and methods, structure, organisation reconfigure with a feminist and agroecological research approach.
Perrine Bulgheroni
International business lawyer Perrine Bulgheroni started a farm in the Normandy village of Le Bec-Hellouin that slowly became a profitable 20 hectares organic farm. Perrine has now left the farm and helps other farmers. She gives advice in France and abroad as to how to secure food production in a multiple crisis context and is looking forward to creating a new cooperative project. She also teaches and gives conferences. Perrine was an elected member of the Normandy parliament from 2010 to 2016.
Chiara Flora Bassignana
Chiara Flora Bassignana is a researcher fellow at the University of Gastronomic Sciences of Pollenzo, in the Agroecology group. Her research interests revolve around agroecology, biocultural diversity with a particular focus on mountainous areas, new ruralisms and commons. She holds a PhD in Ecogastronomy, Education and Society from the University of Gastronomic Sciences of Pollenzo.
WORKSHOP 10: Connecting local agroecological initiatives with scientific research in Europe
This workshop will discuss how to effectively organize innovation-oriented research projects as interventions in complex socio-technical change processes. Agroecology-TRANSECT Horizon Europe project aims to unfold the full potential of agroecology for European agriculture. To do so, it is teaming up knowledge and expertise in 11 multi-actor Innovation Hubs (IHs) that have been engaged in agroecological transitions for multiple years, with engaged analysis-oriented scientists using a complexity-aware co-innovation approach for its governance. The IHs cover a diversity of farming systems and agroecological practices and principles; the scientists come from various areas of the natural and social sciences.
Adrien Swartebroeckx
As a young bioengineer in agronomic field, Adrien Swartebroeckx began his career working on a local cereal network for a brewery. He then jumped on the Agroecology-TRANSECT project and is now coordinator of the CRA-W (Belgian research center) team for this project.
Darleen van Dam
Darleen van Dam holds a Bachelor’s degree in Plant Science and a Master’s degree in Rural Innovation, which have equipped her with interdisciplinary knowledge and social science methods to explore agricultural transitions. As an action researcher at Wageningen Research she has been involved in various national and international projects. Her engagement in the Agroecology-TRANSECT project focuses on supporting the learning platform and its diverse agroecology initiatives.
Workshop 11:
Practical applications of One Health: Ecosystem building through engaging local communities, citizens, and authorities
During this workshop we are going to explore the practical applications of One Health. We’ll learn how having One Health as a pillar we can build a resilient ecosystem through the engagement of local communities, citizens, and authorities.
Cristina Laurenti
Cristina Laurenti is researcher on sustainable food consumption at FiBL and co-founder of the Coalition of Health Profesionnals for Regenerative Agriculture (CHPRA), a movement of health professionals aiming to accelerate regenerative healthcare. She is a Board member of Agroecology Europe and Coordinator of theAgroecology Europe Youth Network. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Dietietcis and Master degree in Agroecology and Food Sovereignty at UNISG. With passion, unique perspective and knowledge she embodies the link between agroecology and nutrition.
Eirini Tsirimokou
Eirini boasts a diverse background in both Life Sciences and Business, and has recently gained expertise as an Integrative Nutritionist. Her extensive experience in various aspects of the food system has provided her with a comprehensive and multidimensional understanding. Presently, Eirini holds the position of Comms & Insights Officer at the NGO, Sustainable Food Destination Organisation (SFDO), and is proud to be one of the co-founders of CHPRA.
Workshop 12: Climate action as a driver for agroecology in Central Eastern Europe: exchanging experiences and building alliances
This workshop aims at presenting and discussing the results of a research project analysing Common Agricultural Policy Stategic Plans in 11 CEE countries, along with a needs assessment for capacity building. The workshop will strengthen the collaboration and exchange of experiences among stakeholders in order to support strategic planning for climate neutral and resilient agri-food systems and improved exchange and capacity building for nature-based climate action in Central Eastern Europe.
Ana frelih-larsen
Dr. Ana Frelih-Larsen is a Senior Fellow at Ecologic Institute, where she coordinates activities on agriculture and soils. She has worked extensively on the evaluation and development of policy instruments for soil health, carbon farming, and more broadly mitigation and adaptation in agriculture. Her work in particular focuses on policies that support the implementation of nature-based solutions in agriculture. A native of Slovenia and fluent in German and English, she has a strong geographic interest in Central Eastern Europe.
Currently, she leads a project on Capacity Building for Ambitious Climate Action in the Agri-food Sector in Central Eastern Europe, funded by the Robert Bosch Foundation.
Workshop 13: Agroecology "Schools Without Walls": trust, feeling, territory, and the education of eco-political concern
Agroecology Schools have become strategic spaces of social movements for scaling up agroecology, strengthening the work for food sovereignty and engaging people, especially youth, back in local food system work. An Agroecology School is a self-organised safe space where farmers share knowledge and wisdom on a peer-to-peer principle. The School’s methodology is rooted in years of experience of the work done by La via Campesina in the methodology campesino-a-campesino. Being autonomous of governments or formal adult education institutions, Agroecology Schools bridge the gap between practical and theoretical knowledge, as well as technical and political skills and provide a platform to unite learning and knowledge-sharing with action research and civic engagement. They are holistic and empowering, including two-way learning processes between policy makers, researchers and farmers to build strategic networks and prioritising peasant knowledge at the heart of food system transformation. In this workshop we will explore three critical dimensions of Agroecology Schools’ learning process dialogue of diverse knowledges: trust, feeling and territory. These three aspects of popular education in agroecology are critical for shaping and reflecting about shared eco-political concerns. We will review strategies in which each, trust, feeling and the connection to territory can be strengthened and mutually connected in a learning process to deepen the bonds of reciprocity between learners and their land and activate political vision for collective action.
Andrea Ferrante
Andrea Ferrante is an agroecologist and freelance consultant on agricultural policies and agroecology. Mr Ferrante has over 20 years’ experience in international food and agriculture policy development and rural development. He has extensive experience in working with and supporting small-scale food producing organizations globally, including in policy processes at national, regional and international level. Additionally, Mr Ferrante has 20 years’ experience in running an organic family farm and actually member of a Bio social coop running a farm in Viterbo province (Italy). He is the Coordinator of the Schola Campesina Aps, International agroecology school based in the Biodistretto della Via Amerina e delle Forre (Civita Castellana, Viterbo, Italy).
session presenters
session 1: Multi-level policy initiatives to reshape the CAP
Scaling agroecology in East Europe—how to start the transition process
In Eastern Europe agroecology can have great potential for agricultural transformation. Designing and guiding the transition process, starting from local value chains, with different sets of agroecological principles (HLPE, FAO) can enable agroecology to provide key elements for transforming food production systems that can be the cornerstone of development schemes to improve food security and nutrition in the future.
Srdjan Šeremešić
Prof. Dr Srđan Šeremešić has recived a basic traing in agronomy and is currently a full professor at the University of Novi Sad. My research focuses on sustainable agriculture, organic agriculture, cropping systems and soil management. Since the beginning of my research career, I have been working with different ecological approaches to archive tangible improvements in the field of safe food production and agroecology.
Environmental attitudes and motivations of farmers: behavioural and economic drivers and barriers to green change in agriculture
Environmental attitudes and motivations of farmers: behavioural and economic drivers and barriers to green change in agriculture. In addition to the development of the right policy incentives, the willingness of farmers to participate is a crucial prerequisite for the successful implementation of policy objectives. My presentation will share the results of a comprehensive research on Hungarian farmers’ environmental knowledge and attitudes about green agricultural reforms and their intentions as well as barriers to act, with the aim of supporting a more environmentally effective implementation of the future CAP.
Eszter Takács
Mrs. Eszter Takács is a Researcher (Climate and Environmental Research Department) at the Institute of Agricultural Economics Nonprofit Kft. (AKI). She graduated in 2003 as an agricultural engineer in environmental management at the University of Agriculture and Life Sciences in Hungary and is also a biology teacher. She started her career in the field of environmental education, later she gained experience in the management and professional implementation of nature conservation and agricultural research projects. Working at AKI for the last 8 years, she is involved among others in the environmental analyses of the CAP implementation, as well as in national and international research on sustainable agricultural production methods.
Fostering cooperative agroecological approaches to restore biodiverse, resilient cultural heritage landscapes and improve food security in Europe
The roundtable will discuss views/perspectives from different stakeholders on well-functioning agri-environmental measures and incentives that foster cooperative approaches and agroecology practices. Participants will then be invited to collect suggestions for improving current EU agri-environmental regulations and financing schemes that could feed into the next CAP negotiations with EU MS.
Zsolt Szilvacsku
Dr. Zsolt Miklós Szilvácsku is Assistant professor Department of Landscape Planning and Regional Development at the Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences (MATE). He has worked on the development and regulation of environmental impact assessments, led the nature conservation work of Birdlife Hungary, relaunched the Association of Hungarian Nature Parks and established and managed the Land Stewardship Advisory Service, which helps to conserve and manage agricultural lands, forests and wetlands. As a small-scale farmer himself he brings together the environmentally friendly farmers of the nature parks and to strengthen and disseminate their knowledge and experience in the Carpathian Basin. He teaches at universities, works as a consultant on agri-environmental and other environmental topics and serves as a Board Member of Landcare Europe.
session 2: Innovative farming practices
Restoring and valuing traditional agricultural knowledge and crop varieties
How can we improve organic farming by looking at the past? By using faba bean and pea intercropping as an example, I will share my experience of how I created a research project inspired by a historical farming practice in Sweden.
Dylan Wallman
Dylan Wallman is a PhD candidate at the Dept. of Biosystems and Technology at Swedish Agricultural University (SLU). He is a Horticultural scientist from Sweden. He is specialized in organic plant breeding and agrobiodiversity facilitation. Main crops are cereals and legumes and he is currently researching intercropping of peas with faba beans and/or cereals in organic farming systems.
Mycorrhizal fungi: from natural diversity to inoculation and beyond
Diversity of mycorrhizal fungal species are one of the main prerequisites of a healthy soil, as they are the most important connection of plant roots and the soil. Results on natural diversities and the possible role of commercial mycorrhizal inocula will be discussed.
István Parádi
István Parádi is an assistant professor at the Department of Plant Biology and Molecular Plant Biology at ELTE, where he has been researching and teaching plant biology for 25 years and spent several years in research institutions abroad (Netherlands, Switzerland, France). His main areas of interest are plant-microbe symbioses and plant stress biology. In 2022, he co-founded ExperiPlant Ltd., which aims to combine rigorous scientific approaches with agricultural practice, in particular in the development of sustainable and bio-based solutions.
Food production and landscape value: silvopasture as a possible sustainable livestock production system
Breeding and farming with an agroecological approach could contribute to a maintenance of a beautiful and productive landscape. The study of the relationships between trees, pastures, animals and humans is essential to ensure high animal welfare, sustainable farm management, healthy lives for farmers and food quality, in a regenerative process. Therefore, the results of the researches carried out on the silvopastoral Tenuta di Paganico farm as part of the Horizon project “Agromix”, are described.
Jacopo Goracci
Jacopo Goracci is a farm manager at Tenuta di Paganico Farm, Paganico (GR), Italy. “I’m an agronomist and have lived and worked for 18 years on the Tenuta di Paganico, an italian organic silvopastoral farm. I’m curious, I love research applied to agro-ecosystems and to the connections between humans, animals and landscape.”
Fermented forest litter (FFL)
How can we improve organic farming by looking at the past? By using faba bean and pea intercropping as an example, I will share my experience of how I created a research project inspired by a historical farming practice in Sweden.
Ole Ostermann
Ole Ostermann was a policy co-ordinator at the Joint Research Centre (JRC)—the science and knowledge service of the European Commission. Ole is an ecologist and biologist by training and holds a PhD in agronomy from his studies in Hamburg, Montpellier and Göttingen. He had previously worked in protected areas, and for four years at the European Topic Centre for Nature Conservation in Paris, for the European Environment Agency. Since 2019, Ole retired and is now experiencing agroecological olive farming in the south of France. Ole is also member of the administrative board of a French NGO, Terre & Humanisme, active in agroecology training.
Tomato landraces—a success story
By 2016, ÖMKi had tested 35 tomato landrace varieties in different regions of the country and by 2022, 24.000 plantlets had been distributed to gardeners through a supermarket chain. How did this success story unfold? This is what the presentation will show.
Orsolya Papp
Orsolya Papp is research leader at the Hungarian Research Institute of Organic Agriculture
(ÖMKi). “At ÖMKI, I have been carrying out various horticultural on-farm research in collaboration with farmers for more than 10 years. Besides the research work, I also run a certified organic farm in Zsámbok, which, in addition to the production activities, also performs landscape variety conservation tasks as a Magház HUB and NBGK on-farm partner.”
session 3: Transforming education and extension services: from top-down knowledge transfer to more horizontal farmer-to-farmer approaches
ERASMUS+ to create a network of farm schools in Europe
EUfarms, the European Network of European Network of Regenerative Organic Farms, is initiated by farmers working with ecosystems. These farms are economically and humanly viable and their prosperity is ensured by the regeneration of social and environmental ecosystems. Their surface area is greater than 30 ha, they are certified in Organic Agriculture and they also have in common that they have developed at least two interconnected production workshops and a processing/sales workshop.
Emilie Rousselou
Emilie Rousselou co-created the Spiruline arc-en-ciel farm in 2013, and runs EUfarms, the European Network of Agroecological Farms. She is involved in a number of associations active in the farming world and helps to design agroecological projects. A geographer by training, Emilie Rousselou has always based her professional experience on projects linked to agroecology, the creation of farmers’ networks and territorial projects. Emilie has also been training in permaculture agro-ecosystem design since 2013, at the Bec Hellouin organic farm and with Jessie and Andy Darlington. Emilie is a trainer for several organisations, including the Lycée agricole de Nîmes, the Fédération des Spiruliniers de France, and the CIVAM du Gard. Emilie ran the Domaine du Possible University in Arles for 4 years. Emilie ran the training and research centre for a change of scale in agroecology and coordinated agricultural production on the 136-hectare organic farm.
Knowledge gaps as barriers in agroecological transitions: Lessons learnt from UNISECO
The paper is an attempt to examine the issue of knowledge in the process of transition towards agroecological farming systems. During our research work for UNISECO we identified knowledge gaps and, therefore, needs to be addressed during the transition.
Authors: Alexandra Smyrniotopoulou, George Vlahos, Gerald Schwartz, Alex Koutsouris
Dr. George Vlahos
Dr. George Vlahos is assistant professor in the Agricultural University of Athens and has collaborated in various research projects focusing on rural and agri-environmental policies. He is author of various articles on these subjects and collaborated in books. He is currently chairing the Board of Trustees of WWF Hellas.
Horticultural farmers’ views on and experience with the practical application of agroecological solutions in Latvia
The presentation highlights results of a collaborative interdisciplinary research project carried out in Latvia exploring the agronomic and social aspects of technological solutions such as intercropping, catch crops, cover crops, and green manure application aimed at ensuring the enforcement of the Green Deal in horticulture. Based on 19 in-depth interviews with practising farmers, the author analyses their experiences and views regarding the adoption of these technologies and sources of horticultural information and knowledge.
Anda Adamsone-Fiskovica, Dr.sc.soc.
Anda Adamsone-Fiskovica is Senior researcher, Baltic Studies Centre (Riga, Latvia) and has an academic background in sociology and social studies of science and technology. Her current research interests cover topics related to agricultural knowledge and innovation system, farmer learning and decision-making, multi-actor collaboration, circular use of bioresources, social aspects of food production and consumption, and digitalisation.