Funded by the Horizon Europe program, the project OrganicTargets4EU, "Transformation scenarios for boosting organic farming and organic aquaculture towards the Farm-to-Fork targets," launched on September 1, 2022. The kick-off meeting took place in Budapest from October 5 to 7, 2022. At this event, the 17 partners from across Europe, coordinated by IFOAM Organics Europe, laid the foundations of an ambitious project supporting the EU Farm to Fork Strategies goal to increase organic farming to 25% of the EU’s agricultural land by 2030.
That means an increase of approximately 15%, Bram Moeskops, project coordinator and Research and Innovation Manager at IFOAM Organics Europe, explains: “The organic sector needs to grow from 9.2% farmland in 2020 to 25% farmland by 2030. There is no concrete target for organic aquaculture, but a similar almost three-fold growth will require enormous efforts. Reaching these ambitious goals demands a balanced upscaling of both production and consumption and implies a huge transformation in farm structures and value chains. This transformation needs to be supported by pioneering research and innovation (R&I), strong advisory services, effective knowledge exchange and training opportunities for all organic operators and related professionals.”
Using a multi-actor approach in collaboration with Practice Partners from Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, and Romania, the project will identify existing tools to further expanded the Organic Farm Knowledge platform’s toolbox. Additionally, knowledge and innovations discovered in the project will be presented in new tools, further enriching the knowledge in the toolbox.