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The project German-Kazkah Agricultural Political Dialogue (APD), implemented by AFC Agriculture and Finance Consultants GmbH, Germany, participated in one of the world's leading trade fairs for organic food, the BIOFACH in Nuremberg, Germany, from 26 to 29 July 2022.
The BIOFACH conference gathers international actors with stakes in organic agriculture, including regulators and policy-makers as well as businesses, who discuss the latest industry trends.
On 29 July, APD organized a side event to showcase achievements in regard to climate resilience and adaptation in past and ongoing projects on sustainable agriculture, with a specific focus on Kazakhstan.
The session was opened with a keynote speech, titled “Green Finance & Climate Smart Agriculture - backbones of international development cooperation" by Mr Johannes Buschmeier, managing director of AFC Agriculture and Finance Consultants GmbH in Bonn. While Green Finance are investments providing benefits in the context of environmentally sustainable development, Climate-Smart Agriculture focuses on the transformation of agri-food systems towards green and climate resilient practices – a huge challenge, especially in the light that agriculture is both, a victim of climate change and at the same time a contributor. International development cooperation projects are increasingly addressing the issue of combating climate change; AFC alone is presently implementing several projects in this context. With examples from several countries, concrete tools and practices to increase resilience in agricultural production systems were presented.
Following the key note speech, experts of a plenum discussed the topic. Mr Arsen Kerimbekov, director of Qazaqstan Organic Producers Union (QOPUnion) impressively described with examples and figures, how Kazakh farmers are already suffering from climate change effects. Mr Alexander Barnewitz, team leader of the German-Kazkah Agricultural Political Dialogue, pointed out the climate issues addressed by the project within the context of Kazakstan.
Mr Vladyslav Zhmailo, Policy and Guarantee Coordinator of IFOAM - Organics International, recalled the high potential of Organic Agriculture in mitigating climate change and called for more action: “Instead of throwing scientific papers at each other, let’s move from theory to practical implementation of climate-relevant activities”, he said.
The panelists agreed that the situation for farmers is already very difficult and threatening. The global community is experiencing drastic crop losses, rising death rates among sensitive population groups and fires with great destructive power. Elisabeth Rüegg, moderator of the session, finalized the outcome of the discussion with the appeal: “This makes it all the more important to quickly develop more appropriate and easy-to-use strategies, which can be implemented in the context of development cooperation activities”.
The event was attended by a number of organic agriculture practitioners and academics. The session has been recorded by video and is available for all Biofach visitors.
If you have any questions about our activities in the APD Kasachstan project, please contact our project manager Stefanie Maak (stefanie.maak [at] afci.de) or our team leader on site Alexander Barnewitz (alexander.barnewitz [at] afci.de).
This article was written by our Expert Elisabeth Rüegg (elisabeth.rueegg [at] afci.de)