News & Events

We are having our third virtual project meeting this year between 3 and 6 November 2020. 

The objective of the meeting includes to review the status quo of the project and the progress, to prepare forthcoming activities in the WPs and to review the next steps until the next project meeting, to review the multi-actor engagement and agree on revisions and to review dissemination and exploitation.

UNISECO project partner SLU is organising an online seminar on November 26, 15:00 –16:30 (GMT+1) featuring Miguel A. Altieri Professor, UC Berkeley Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management.

UNISECO project partner Adrian Müller (FiBL) is also a panellist at the webinar on ‘Advocating for transformational change for agri-food systems’ on Monday 16th of November from 15:30 – 17:00 (CET) organised by Agroecology Europe together with ActAlliance, IPES Food, FIBL, IFOAM.

The European Commission launched a survey in the context of the discussion on building a European research and innovation partnership on agroecology living labs and research infrastructures under Horizon Europe.

Dear Colleague,

We are pleased to announce that the final conference of the UNISECO project will take place on the 18th and 19th of March 2021. The conference was planned to take place in Brussels, Belgium, but due to the Covid-19 pandemic the conference will be virtual.

The challenges of producing enough food and biomass while preserving soil, water and biodi-versity cannot be solved only by dominant types of conventional agriculture. Agro-ecological approaches are fundamental for sustainable food production in the future. The key dilemma is how to produce sufficient public goods whilst having viable production of private goods securing economic and social sustainability at a farm level, which is not too dependent on public funds.

60-70% of European soils are currently unhealthy. To restore soil health in the EU and beyond, the European Commission (EC) has established the Mission: Caring for Soil is Caring for Life with a clear mandate to support sustainable soil use and management throughout the Union.

Scheduled around the World Food Day this conference was the first in what was an annual gathering of European stakeholders willing to engage and help shape the EU's path towards sustainable food systems.

UNSIECO was following and contributing to the Green Europe theme session "Regional Living Labs for Agroecology" on 20 October 2020. You can reach the recording of the session here.

After the adoption of a new EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 in May, Green Week highlighted the contribution biodiversity can make to society and the economy, and the role it can play in supporting and stimulating recovery in a post-pandemic world, bringing jobs and sustainable growth.

Co-hosted by the World Food System Center and the Agricultural Economics and Policy Group of ETH Zurich key challenges and present pathways for advancing European pesticide policies were discussed at a Zoom webinar on 20 October 2020.