Conference report

Following on from above, you will probably have noticed that suddenly tomatoes disappeared off the shelves in shops, as well as from our webshop - there was a general plague of bugs, particularly the Green Southern Stink Bug (Nezara viridula), as well as a bad year for the catepillar of the Cotton Bollworm (Helicoverpa (Heliothis) armigera) - the combination of which quickly finished off our tomato crop - this increase in insect attacks is widely felt (especially by organic farmers, who don't turn to chemical sprays to control bugs, but rather need time to develop more complex pest and disease control strategies), as a direct consequence of climate change.

Meanwhile, this week has been a busy one for getting off the farm, and networking. Matthew attended the IFOAM Organics Europe /ÖMKI (International Federation of Organic Farming Movements - Europe) Congress, this year held in Budapest. This was an opportunity to share and hear about what is going on in organics across Europe. For those who want to dive deep, you might be interested read the (heavyweight) "Strategic dialogue for the future of EU agriculture", which is a 110 page seminal review of EU agricultural policy, which was much talked about, and suggests an important role for organic farming in Europe.

The interesting themes of the conference were (for me) "NO PATENTS ON SEEDS" - a campaign to prevent big companies from controlling our seeds, effective approaches to marketing organic food - especially to increase consumers awareness of the environmental impacts of food, and generally just hearing what the common issues organic farmer are facing (particularly the domination of the market by discounting supermarkets - Aldi, Lidl, etc.).

This week Petro Csaba, our production manager, attended the V. Öko-Expo hosted in Hajdúnanás, in eastern Hungary. Hopefully, Csaba will offer a short report of this in next week's newsletter Farmpost.

Source: own photo

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