On Cyprus the Intercollege Larnaca and the Friends of Nature Cyprus organized the 1st International Conference on Biodiversity . The Conference was opened by Dr. Lola Sanchez from the Intercollege supported by Dr. A. Djoghlaf/Executive-Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Mr. Ch. Theopemptou/Cypriot Commissioner for the Environment and the Spanish Ambassador, H.E. Mr. Juan Jose Urtasun Erro in his function for the EU-presidency.

More than 150 participants followed the 30 speaker-slots. The origin of the speakers ranged from Costa Rica, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, UK, Ukraine to the USA. Prof. Dr. B. Hallier represented the EHI Retail Institute with the topic “From Crisis Management to proactive Corporate Social Responsibility” . The papers will become available as a book. ( more via E-Mail )
 

Under the coordination of Prof. Dr. Schiefer from the University of Bonn/Germany nine partners from Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary and Sweden started an EU-project to increase transparency within the Food Business.

The project got an Advisory Board consisting out of Michael Coomans/formerly DG Enterprise/EU, Prof.Colin Dennis/formerly Campden BRI/UK, Prof. Dr. Klaus Grunert/Aarhus/DK, Herman Hagspiel/fairea/AT, Prof.Dr.Bernd Hallier/EHI Retail Institute/DE, Dr.Hans Joehr/Nestle/CH, Dr. Jan Maat/Unilever and Wageningen/NL, Dr. Anton Mangstl/Director WAICENT/FAO/IT, Dr. Herman-Josef Nienhoff/Q&S Quality System/DE, Gabor Palotas/Univer Product PLC/HU, Jörg Pretzel/GS1/DE, Daniele Rossi/Federalimentare/IT, Prof. Jeane-Claude and Villetaz/HEVS, Eureka/Euragri/CH
 

At the Fourth Annual Food Industry Summit of St. Joseph's University /Philadelphia/USA top executives exchanged their views about "Meeting the Challenges of Today's Marketplace". Speakers were Mike Salzberg/President of Campbell Sales Company, Fred Morganthal/President of Harris Teeter, Pamela Bailey/President of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, Andre Hawaux/President Consumer Foods and COO of ConAgra, Scott Young/Senior VP Coca Cola North America and Jeffrey Brown/President of Brown's Super Stores.

On the occasion of the summit the organizer Prof.Dr. John Stanton/SJU and Prof.Dr. Bernd Hallier/ERA agreed to run continuously courses for Environmental Retail Management on the SJU campus. The first seminar will start in September 2010 about "best practice examples for Good Agricultural Practice as a gate for food marketing". The seminar will be under the leadership of Prof. Stanton and Prof. Hallier - supported by SJU staff and the EHI subsidiaries GlobalGAP and Orgainvent
 

There are two reasons to use agricultural products for transformation into energy-concepts:

• There is a decrease of worldwide oil resources – therefore there is a need to substitute oil by other inputs
• in some regions farmers don’t earn enough margin in their traditional food-markets – therefore they have to look for alternative sectors

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) will support a research network „Organic Research Centres Alliance“ (ORCA). ( More ) The vision is to:

• create centres of excellence in organic and biodynamic agriculture by networking and strengthening existing human and institutional resources
• maintain an electronic platform where all knowledge on organic and biodynamic agriculture can be accessed ;
• establish attractive research farms for demonstration and training;
• conduct in-farm research with farmers and involve practitioners in the whole innovation process;
• train and mentor young scientists through fellowship programmes;
• publish peer-reviewed organic research papers;
• compete for external funding for joint research programmes, while also reallocating and pooling existing resources to improve efficiency