Innovation in agriculture and empowering women in agri-food

Aleksandra Niżyńska provides examples of activities run or supported by EIT Food, Europe’s leading food innovation initiative. These are, among others: HUB Hackaton: Future Food, which gathered more than 100 hackathon participants, mentors and speakers from all over the Baltics and Scandinavia, while the winning team received tickets to an industry event in the Netherlands and one of the winning teams participated in EIT Food Innovation prize. Another example provided by expert is project EWA: Empowering Women in Agri-food, which goal is empowering women from rural areas to grow their own businesses, boosting entrepreneurship skills among female population in RIS countries, scouting innovative ideas and being entry point for other EIT Food programmes for startups, training, mentoring, business coaching and networking opportunities for women entrepreneurs in the agrifood sector. The objective of programme is to motivate early stage female entrepreneurs to harness their power, understand their innate ability to succeed and overcome any obstacles, equip them with the appropriate knowledge, confidence and networks to successfully start and develop sustainable businesses.

Author presents also initiative RIS Fellowships, dedicated to MSc students, graduates and young entrepreneurs. They will reveal their talent in the agri-food sector, throughout gaining hands-on experiences and strengthening their job-related skills, including analytical thinking and creative problem-solving, when RIS Fellowship interns will be engaged in learning-by-doing activities (internal projects and tasks of EIT Food Partners) carried out by each hosting company.  

Speaker also presents Food Foresight COVID-19 and its project stages: diagnosis and horizon scanning, COVID-19 Impact Mapping, scenarios drawing, highlighting consequences, policy and investment implications, regarding impact on the agri-food sector in 12 RIS countries from Central and Eastern Europe. Furthermore, speaker briefly presented key opportunities for sustainable recovery for farmers and input providers coming from report.

Material was produced as a part of the project supported under “Public Diplomacy 2020 New Dimension”, being co-financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Republic of Poland. The content expresses only the views of the authors and cannot be equated with the official position of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland. Project is implemented by the Development Policy Foundation.

Podcast link  https://youtu.be/rW9SYB_QLVg