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The European Green Deal is a package of policy initiatives, which aims to set the EU on the path to a green transition, with the ultimate goal of reaching climate neutrality by 2050. The European Green Deal provides solutions related to climate, environment and nature protection issues. It contains measures to improve resource efficiency through the transition to a clean circular economy and to stop climate change, reduce pollution and restore biodiversity.

We joined the organic farming conference, organized by ÖMKi in Kecskemét at John von Neumann University on 28 February 2023, with a full session dedicated to the CAPTIVATE project activities, attracting nearly 60 participants, primarily farm advisors, farmers, teachers, and students.

We are in Austria on the 3rd TPM of the project, hosted by FiBL-AT, between 16-17 January 2023. This is a crucial and busy period by the CAPTIVATE work plan, right before starting the learning activities, and soon finishing the development of our knowledge base, assessment tool, and e-learning platform. We are also getting ready for the learning teaching training activity, and the preparation for the first wave of multiplier events.

Today, the world's agriculture faces many environmental, economic and social challenges. Answers to problems often induce development directions that are partly opposed to each other, such as in the case of digitization and ecologization. In our research, we identified the most important sustainability challenges affecting agriculture, the food industry and consumption through descriptive statistical analysis of Eurostat's agri-environment management indicators and HCSO data.

Climate change and environmental degradation present a serious threat to Europe and the entire world. Since the time of the industrial revolution, there has been a significant increase in the average temperature at the world level, and the average temperature at the world level today is higher by 0.94 - 1.03° than at the end of the 19th century. According to the European Environment Agency, the EU is the third largest source of greenhouse gases in the world, right after China and the USA.

Agriculture and food systems are the central driving forces of environmental degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change. In order to facilitate the transition towards more sustainable forms of food production, understanding and measuring on farm sustainability is crucial to evaluating the status quo and progress of applying on farm environmental measures and eco-practices.

Farmers and their farms play a crucial role in the transition towards more sustainable agriculture and food systems. Recognizing the urgent need for increasing resilience of socio-economic and ecological systems, we must consider sustainability assessment as an auspicious instrument for improving decision-making strategies at farm level to facilitate sustainable change.

Sustainability is the buzzword in the current debate about the environmental impact of the agricultural and food sector. The sector needs to become much more sustainable, most experts, practicioners and political decision-makers agree. But how this should be done, continues to cause heated debates. The central question is: how can we produce and provide sufficient healthy and culturally appropriate food for a growing  population in a resource limited world? At the same time, farmers should reduce negative environmental and social impacts of food production.

In the view of increasing environmental concerns, sustainability has come into the foreground over the past decade and several sustainability assessment tools have been developed. Critiques claim though, sustainability is only an empty phrase because of frequent unreflective usage and overstretching of the concept - often solely for commercialization purpose. Nonetheless, sustainability assessment is more important than ever due to ongoing environmental degradation, socioeconomic worsening or even crises related to agriculture and food systems.

The article primarily provides farmers and consultants with basic information about the current situation of organic farming. Within the framework of the CAPTIVATE program, it provides information on the topic of sustainable and organic farming.

Organic farming is one of the fastest growing farming methods in the world nowadays. Its rapid spread is explained by the fact that many consumers and producers consider it to be the most environmentally sustainable agricultural practice, which provides healthy, safe food for consumers. Organic farming is based on the concept of ecological farming, which is where the adjectives "ecological" and "biological" come from. The aim of ecological farming is to ensure sustainable development, during it reaches back to locally available reserves. 

The world’s agriculture faces many challenges nowadays, such as tackling the effects of climate change, conserving agrobiodiversity, or feeding the Earth’s growing population. These issues often induce conflicting development directions, such as digitalization and ecologization, as the case of the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) shows. In the last decades, policymakers have focused mainly on greening agricultural production and the food industry, and now the CAP is part of the European Green Deal.

Within the framework of the new EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) starting in 2023, a new form of support, the so-called Agro-ecological Program (AÖP) is introduced in Hungary.
Based on the received information from the Ministry of Agriculture (AM), we would like to draw attention below to the main planned rules and features of the program, foreseen in the Hungarian Strategic Plan.

The importance of organic farming is growing around the world. Globally, 1.5% of the world's agricultural land is currently organic. Around the world, between 2005 and 2019, the agricultural area involved in organic farming expanded to 72.3 million hectares, but the rate of growth varied by continent (Figure 1) (Central Statistical Office).

What is Inside?
Kick off meeting, Hungary
Report on eco-farm assessment tools;
Web-based tool for the CAPTIVATE knowledge base development
2nd partnership meeting, Nitra, Slovakia;
17th international Symposium on Agriculture
Project basics

Information about our CAPTIVATE project was recently published by one of the leading Hungarian agricultural journals, the AgroForum, introducing OMKi's activities related to farm advisory, mentioning our project from the 2nd page. The full content of the article is available in the paper format in Hungarian (attached).

Several trends have now emerged under the auspices of sustainable agriculture, some of which continue to use conventional tools (chemical control, artificial fertilizers), while other trends completely reject them and look for ecological solutions instead.

IPS Konzalting participated on the 57th Croatian and 17th international Symposium on Agriculture in Vodice on June 21, 2022. 

The main objective of the Symposium on Agriculture is to acquaint agronomists and the general public with the results of the latest scientific research by Croatian and foreign experts, and thus enable a better transfer of scientific achievements to agricultural production.

Project partners gathered in Agroinstitut, Nitra, SK on 14 and 15 June 2022, to discuss and further develop the first main outputs, including the CAP eco practice knowledge base and sustainable eco farm assessment tool.

As part of activities targeting Result 2 in our project (task A: Survey of the methodological background and critical review of the existing assessments tools), we are aiming at the development of our own Eco-Farm Assessment & Decision Tool (EAD Tool). The survey, which was recently completed, gives an overview of the methodological background of selected farm assessment tools, CAP measures, farm data and information systems, implemented at the national levels.  

In the first year of the project implementation, partner organizations carry out the professional preparatory, research and content development tasks, during which a detailed study and development plan is prepared for the sustainability assessment tool, as well as specific, tailor-made web application is developed to link requirements of the Common Agricultural Policy with good farming practice guidelines.

In the first half of the implementation, the partner organizations carried out the professional preparation, research and processing tasks, a detailed study and development plan will be prepared for the sustainability assessment tool, a special web application will be developed to link requirements with practice guidelines, and the basic project implementation infrastructure will be established.
    
Following the opening meeting in Budapest last December, the second partnership meeting will take place in June 2022 in Nitra, Slovakia, organized by the Agroinstitut.

Our partners, describing the main project related information, have created and published dedicated section for the CAPTIVATE project on their websites.  which also provide a lot of interesting and relevant professional content. 

Agroinstitut, Slovakia: Weblink>>

CAPTIVATE Project Launch

The Kick-Off meeting of the new CAPTIVATE (CAP Transfer of Information Via Assessment, Training & Extension) project, supported by the Erasmus+ programme (KA220-VET - Cooperation partnerships in vocational education and training) was held in Budapest, Hungary, hosted by ÖMKi (project coordinator), between 2-3 December 2021.