PRESS RELEASE ‘Can EU CAP it?’ Project finished touring, the full CAP learning is ready to CAP on the users

March 23 2015 

“Food and agricultural policies need a new narrative as a first step for a paradigm shift towards sustainable and secure food production”. With these words Miss Gerda Verburg, chairperson of the Committee of World Food Security (CSF) set the tone for the debate during the event on the topic of “Food security and food quality in the context of the new CAP” that took place at INEA in Rome on Wednesday March 18. “It’s not about who is to blame for what’s wrong with food and agriculture today, but to develop a common story on how to address today’s and tomorrow’s global problems. Europe has a big role to play in this”.        

The Rome event marked the last in a series of four events that took place across Europe over the last months. Other key note speakers included Matteo Bartolini, president of CEJA, who underlined Miss Verburg’s plea to give more attention to the generational renewal in agriculture, which is not only a problem in Europe but worldwide. He went on to remark that “the new CAP offers some new options to give support to young farmers, but this is merely a start. Unfortunately, we also witness that many Member States have not or only marginally included the young farms support in their CAP policy”.

Other presentations were given by Andrea Ferraretto, responsible staff member for agriculture at the City Council of Rome, Maurizio Mariani, director of the Eating City project and Franco Sotte, scientific director of Agriregionieuropa.

The event also included the award ceremony of the European CAP Game Competition that took place from November last year until March 1. After an intense battle the top three winners were invited to Rome for a three day fully funded trip and during their stay to collect their awards. By a narrow margin Ingmar Ludwig (Germany) won the first prize, just ahead of Mercedes Diez Cocero from Spain and Maxime Bergonso (France) (picture).

The ‘Can EU CAP it?’ Project has been built on the objective to increase and disseminate the knowledge and discussion of the reformed CAP not only for academics and other experts, but to make this rather complex policy also accessible in a simple way to the general public. The ‘Can EU CAP it?’ e-learning platform will continue online with information on the new CAP available in four languages (EN, FR, GE, IT) and will stay accessible in the coming years. 

Ends

*** Download this announcement. ***

Contact

For more information, please contact Mr Bart Soldaat, E soldaat.bart@gmail.com or at T +316 2129 2979.