The CORE Organic Final Research Seminar took place on 17-18 May 2022 at the University Foundation in Brussels. Around 60 participants from across Europe joined in person, and some more joined online on the second day for hybrid sessions. All those who met in Brussels expressed the joy of being back together, and Elke Saggau, (Federal Agency for Agriculture and Food BLE, Germany) commented on physical meetings having "another feeling" and representing "an important opportunity for networking". All agreed and rejoiced at this opportunity.
The network for organic agriculture research, called CORE Organic (Coordination of European Transnational Research in Organic Food and Farming Systems), was an ERA-NET action from the EU's research and innovation funding programme, Horizon 2020. An ERA-NET action is a network of European ministries and research councils funding research at the national level and intended to increase cooperation between national research activities. CORE Organic has existed since 2004, funding 62 transnational research projects in the area of organic food and farming with the involvement of 26 EU ministries and research councils from 19 EU countries/regions. FiBL was a stakeholder partner in the CORE Organic network and has been involved in many ways in the network in the past 17 years, from direct involvement in projects, support in communication, evaluation and moderating the process of finding topics.
The event included both the closing of the CORE Organic Cofund* period and the official launch of the future CORE Organic Pleiades network. All CORE Organic funding and stakeholder partners have been formally invited to take part in this new network which hopes to expand the network, ensure more efficient regulation in call mechanisms and prepare a new organic research call ideally to be part of the European Research and Innovation Partnerships on ‘Agroecology’ and ‘Sustainable Food Systems’ (planned to be finalised in 2023-24).
*CORE Organic Cofund was the fourth in a series of CORE Organic ERA-Nets: CORE Organic 1 and II, CORE Organic Plus and CORE Organic Cofund.
Author: Lauren Dietemann
Further information
Contacts
Weblinks
- tporganics.eu: CORE Organic Final Research Seminar – event review
- coreorganic.org: CORE Organic
- projects.au.dk: CORE Organic Cofund
- scar-europe.eu: Terms of Reference for a SCAR Strategic Working Group (SWG) on Agroecology (SCAR-AE)
- scar-europe.eu: SCAR Food Systems
- organic-farmknowledge.org: Organic Farm Knowledge platform
- fibl.org: Core Organic projects