Reinforcing partnerships and the way forward - YPARD, AGRINATURA, and the SIMPLE project

On January 9 and 10, 2019, The AGRINATURA board members met at the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague in the building of Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences to discuss future steps towards sustainable agriculture.

The Agrinatura Association is a grouping of European universities and research organizations with a common interest in supporting the development of agriculture in a sustainable way and in order to improve the lives of farmers.

YPARD was represented within this board meeting by Dr. Libuška Valešová, YPARD Europe Coordinator, who presented the platform to all participants and gave updates on YPARD’s latest activities. Due to the global engagement of YPARD, most of the AGRINATURA representatives were very familiar with the mission of the platform. However, we provided information on specific issues on request, such as YPARD structure, its management and briefly presented the main points of the new YPARD Strategic Plan 2018 - 2021.

Also present at the AGRINATURA board members meeting was Dr. Petra Chaloupková, the SIMPLE Project Manager who also gave updates on the activities carried out by this project and its ongoing collaboration with YPARD and AGRINATURA.

The SIMPLE project is a three years project (terminating in 2019) co-funded by the ERASMUS+ Programme of the European Union and coordinated by CULS. It aims at supporting the collaboration of the academic sector (Higher Education) and the private sphere in the field of agriculture and life sciences disciplines. Since the project is coordinated by Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences of CULS, the SIMPLE project targets its activities in selected South-East Asian countries - Cambodia, Indonesia, and Thailand.

In the end, the meeting was mainly focused on reinforcing the partnership within these three platforms and building the way forward to contributing toward sustainable agriculture and the role these platforms and their linkage play in creating a path for young professionals to achieve this goal.

Sustainable agriculture is not a far fetched idea, all is possible when they are common goals and motivated movements to achieve them!

We also take this moment to introduce to you Ing. Tereza Slámová, the new AGRINATURA Secretary-General, who is also based at Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, the hosting institution for YPARD Europe!

We also thank Ing. Anna Kroutilová the outgoing AGRINATURA secretary general for her work and collaboration. We wish you success in all your future endeavors. 

Picture credit: AGRINATURA