| Start date: | 13/06/2023 |
|---|---|
| End date: | 15/06/2023 |
| Where: | European Parliament (Strasbourg) |
What’s new in the farmers’ market?
The role of plant breeding in helping farmers build a sustainable, diverse, and resilient European food system.
With the European Green Deal and the Farm to Fork Strategy, the European Commission set out an ambitious agenda to modernise European agriculture and develop a more sustainable and resilient model for Europe that could become a reference globally.
As stated by the European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, Janusz Wojciechowski, “Technologies have to be developed so as to support the broader aims and objectives of society”.
The need for innovative tools changed the debate around genome editing, opening the possibility of regulatory change for these technologies as well as potentially deeper changes in the future. The current global situation, with an ongoing war in Ukraine, demonstrated the fragility of global food systems and the need to strengthen Europe’s food sovereignty, supporting farmers and their crucial task to keep food systems efficient while improving their long-term sustainability.
Farmers are at the centre of this debate. How can innovation, and plant breeding in particular help with their challenges? The aim of this exhibition is to highlight the diversity of challenges and needs that farmers are facing across Europe and to underline the need for a diverse, concrete, and adaptable toolbox to address these challenges. It is widely recognized that in order to face these issues, we need to apply a systems-based approach to working on each level of the food system. One of these levels is plant breeding and its ability to contribute to more sustainable agriculture.
This 2023 is a strategic year in order to deliver on the NGT legislative proposal as well as the Plant Reproductive Material and the Sustainable Food Systems Framework. With the impact assessments and public consultations finalised, the debate has now moved toward the political arena and focuses on broader societal issues.
With this in mind, EU-SAGE and Re-Imagine Europa developed an exhibition at the European Parliament in Strasbourg in order to inform MEPs about the issues at hand and to create support for the adoption of these proposals. The exhibition will be held on June 13-15, in the flower carpet area next to the cafeteria in the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
