EU Clusters Talks - Live from Vilnius: Responsible and sustainable agri-food supply chain solutions

Description

To make food systems fair, healthy, and environmentally friendly, the European Commission developed the Farm to Fork Strategy at the heart of the European Green Deal. Part of the Farm to Fork Strategy is the EU Code of Conduct on Responsible Food Business and Marketing Practices. With the aim to improve the sustainability performance of the food processing, food service and distribution industry, it provides a framework of concrete good practices and voluntary commitments on all three layers of sustainability for all actors along the food supply chain.

In this context, the European Cluster Collaboration Platform, on behalf of the European Commission, DG GROW, held the 4th edition of the EU Clusters Talk series, live from Vilnius: "Responsible and sustainable agri-food supply chain solutions” on 27^th April 2022, 08:30-09:30 CET. In this EU Clusters Talk, the European Commission spoke about European policy in the agri-food industrial ecosystem and the “Code of Conduct on Responsible Food Business”. In the panel discussion, cluster and industry representatives discussed how to put it into practice and what needs to be done to make the food supply chains more sustainable.

The session opened with an update on the current situation in the EU agri-food ecosystem from:

Maive Rute, Deputy Director General and head of the Task Force for Supply Chains at Directorate General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW), European Commission.

Next, Dirk Jacobs, Director General, FoodDrinkEurope, presented details on the challenges and solutions in the agri-food ecosystem and the EU Code of Conduct.

Finally, a panel explored: How can the agri-food ecosystem become more sustainable?

• Kristina Šermukšnytė-Alešiūnienė, General Manager, AgriFood Lithuania DIH 
• Armands Lejas-Krūmiņš, Project Manager, Latvian Federation of Food Companies 
• Eugénie Cornu, International Project Manager, Pôle de Compétitivité Vitagora 

This EU Clusters Talk took place in the context of the “Clusters meet Regions” event and EU Clusters Matchmaking event in Lithuania, on 26 and 27 April 2022.

Useful Documents

Read about the Farm to Fork Strategy and the EU Code of Conduct:

• Farm to Fork Strategy
• EU Code of Conduct on Responsible Food Business and Marketing Practices

Watch the full recording of the webinar:

Summary

Please find below the event summary of this EU Clusters Talk which includes the key takeaways from the session.

EU Clusters Talks: The bi-weekly meeting point for the cluster community

The European Cluster Collaboration Platform invites the cluster community to a regular online meeting to discuss up-to-date insights into the latest industrial policies and cluster activities, cluster knowledge, best practices, the latest ECCP news, and funding opportunities.

The EU Clusters Talks take place every two weeks. Information on the next Talks will be published on the website – stay tuned for more!

Location and date