MAIA Webinar Climate Change and Agroecological farming

About the Webinar

Join us on Friday the 15th of September for the Climate Change and Agriculture Part III with the subtopic Agroecological farming featuring EU projects UNISECO, TITAN and MEDWAYCAP

Registration link

Featuring Projects

1.  UNISECO Understanding and improving the sustainability of agro-ecological farming systems in the EU
Uniseco is a European research project aiming to develop innovative approaches to enhance the understanding of socio-economic and policy drivers and barriers for further development and implementation of agro-ecological practices in EU farming systems.

• Budget: € 4 924 771,00
• Funding call: SOCIETAL CHALLENGES – Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine, maritime and inland water research, and the bioeconomy
• Project duration: 1 May 2018- 30 April 2021
• Partners: 17
• Cordis link

2. TITAN Transparency solutions for transforming the food system.

• Budget: € 11 053 903,31
• Funding call: Food, Bioeconomy Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment
• Project duration: 1 September 2022-31 August 2026
• Partners: 22
• Cordis link

TITAN is a 4-year Horizon Europe R&I project with the ambition to build transparency in food supply chains via implementation of innovative (mainly digital) technologies to boost the health, sustainability, and safety of products, processes, and diets. TITAN will develop 15 innovative solutions to enhance transparency in agri-food businesses with a focus on SMEs. The innovations will be supported by cross-cutting Work Packages dedicated to stakeholder interests, implementation of digital technologies, policy recommendations, business support, management, and communication and dissemination. 

The most important outcome of TITAN is to build an EU Hub that will function as a center of expertise and as a first point of contact with the aim of promoting and facilitating systemic solutions related to transparency. The Network Of Expertise (NOE) that will be built during the runtime of the project as the stakeholder Board, will be an essential part of the Hub. Ideally, the NOE consists of representative sets of experts in the four identified Key Expertise Areas of TITAN(1), Transparency, 2), Sustainability, 3), New (Digital) Technologies, 4), Food System Approach) and the 16 related Expertise Areas.

3. MEDWAYCAP The MEDiterranean pathWAY for innovation CAPitalisation toward an urban-rural integrated development of non-conventional water resources

• Budget: € 1 100 000, 00
• Funding call: B.4 Environmental protection, climate change adaptation and mitigation
• Project duration: 01 October 2021- 30 September 2023
• Partners: 9
• Source

The ENI CBC MED MEDWAYCAP project addresses the challenge of how to embrace the non-conventional water reuse and management in the Mediterranean region through the promotion of sustainable strategies and technological innovations. It is the first ever capitalisation project funded by the ENI CBC MED programme on the Water Efficiency, and has been structured to: transfer and “upgrade” knowledge; reinforce new\existing networks & alliances; raise awareness among public authorities, policy-makers and “challenge owners” about NCWR measures and related opportunities for planning policies and related funding measures.

Featuring Speakers

1. Gerald Schwarz Project coordinator of the EU project UNISEC
Dr Gerald Schwarz is a project coordinator at the Thünen Institute of Farm Economics in Germany. Dr. Schwarz has a Ph.D. in agricultural economics from the Humboldt University Berlin. After his Ph.D. he worked for several years at the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland, and joined the Thünen Institute of Farm Economics in 2009. His current work focuses on transdisciplinary research into the transformation of farming and food systems and innovative market and policy instruments for public good provision from agriculture. He has been involved in a variety of national and international projects on agroecology, organic farming, sustainable farming systems and agri-environmental policies and coordinated several projects on these topics in the EU’s FP6, FP7 and Horizon 2020 programmes.

2. Edward Sliwinski presenting the TITAN project
Edward Sliwinski is a senior R&D manager at the European Federation of Food Science and Technology (EFFoST), based in Wageningen since 2020. By supporting the further development of food science and technology, EFFoST aims to advance the production of sustainable and healthy food for all in a changing world. Since 2018 he is a member of the Strategic Committee on Microbiology and Hygiene (SCMH) of the IDF. Edward has a MSc in “Diseases of Plants” at Wageningen University and a PhD on Food Physics also at Wageningen University. During his career Edward has been employed mostly by industry: Nutricia, Danone, Arla Foods, and Yili Innovation Center Europe. At Nutricia/Danone his focus was mostly on Medical Nutrition, for people and patients with the risk of malnutrition and for patients with swallowing problems. In this period Edward was inventor of more than 10 patent applications. Within Arla and Yili innovation Edward was responsible for matters concerning shelf life and food safety with most focus on consumer products. Edward is married with Doret and has a son and a daughter of 22 years. His hobbies are: being active in sports (running and cycling) and enjoying nature

3. Konstantinos Plakas presenting the MEDWAYCAP project 
Dr Konstantinos V. Plakas is a Chemical Engineer, PhD (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki), Researcher at the Chemical Process and Energy Resources Institute (CPERI) of the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH) and Coordinator of MEDWAYCAP project. His research expertise focuses on the development of advanced technologies for desalination, water and wastewater treatment, for pollution abatement, recovery of added-value materials and energy, in the principles of circular economy and sustainability. His work has been concentrated to membrane processes and advanced oxidation processes and his research activities have resulted in 31 peer-reviewed scientific papers, 5 book chapters, 2 patents and more than 90 papers in international and national conference/workshop proceedings. He has been involved in many R&D projects funded by the European Commission, chemical industries and other national funding agencies, as Coordinator or Scientific Responsible.