XIII Congress of the Spanish Society of Organic Agriculture (SEAE)

Organic-PLUS participated in the XIII Congress of the Spanish Society of Organic Agriculture (Sociedad Española de Agricultura Ecológica, SEAE) that took place in Logroño, La Rioja, Spain, from 14-17 November 2018. Dr Sara Burbi from Coventry University was invited to give a presentation about the project and engage with producers, policy-makers and NGOs that attend SEAE congresses. The event included workshops, roundtables, presentations and poster sessions. Organic-PLUS was included in the session on participatory work to highlight the transdisciplinarity of the project and present early results.

Copper use was considered one of the most contentious inputs by the audience, followed by antibiotics and antiparasitics use in livestock production.

The event was a good opportunity to engage with a variety of stakeholders, primarily from Spain, but also from France, Italy and delegations from Chile, Mexico, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela, as several Latin American countries are embracing organic principles and aim to further promote sustainable farming practices, in particular, adopting the agroecological framework. Agroecology and organic principles held an important role in the congress, which focused on climate change, as well as the proposed changes to the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).