European Agro-Food Conference

Why host this European Union conference in Greece?

The European agro-food industry, a major global player, is currently facing deep economic, technological and regulatory changes. On the consumer side in this industry, their needs and expectations are also evolving fast.

Several European programs and resources are available to support entrepreneurship and the competitiveness of the industry and in particular SME's. Some of them are specifically aimed at the agro-food industry, with a view to helping this sector to grow and prosper.

Better knowledge and understanding of these instruments are pre-requisites for an active participation in the food industry in the European projects that work at sustaining the European food industry ranking in the world, and of course to keep the quality standards in the food supplying the world.

Within the EU, the Greek agro-food industry occupies a very unique position because of its large agriculture sector, the Mediterranean profile of its products being produced and its gate-keeping situation in the Balkan region.

 

WHY attend this conference?

The current situation and the expectations for the future indicate significant changes are likely to affect the economic environment of the Food Industry at both EU and world level:

1. The Common Agricultural Policy will be increasingly directed towards farm producers, while market supports will be progressively dismantled.

2. Due to its dispersed structure, the Food Industry is in a weak position when negotiating with the retail sector.

3. Consumers' preferences are becoming more and more quality demanding encompassing a switch to more ethics (e.g. fair trade, sustainable food production) and a healthier diet.

4. The emerging developing countries are causing a notable increase in the demand for food. Alongside this the use of raw agro-food materials for non-food products has increased and that causes a scarcity of supply and so creating a new risk.

At this conference, European business operators from Greece and other European countries will share their experience in respect of these challenges.

WHY focus on SMEs?

SME's represent 99% of the total number of food companies in Europe and employ more than 4 million people. Therefore, they play a key role in the efforts to keep the European food sector competitive. Because of business constraints, SME leaders have little time to enquire about European initiatives. Therefore, this conference is an opportunity for SME's to improve their knowledge in the area of entrepreneurship and innovation and also enables the Commission to better understand their concerns.

Issues and challenges

The main issues to be addressed at this conference are:

• The competition in the Greek agro-food industry: challenges, issues and drivers
• Private label oriented production: what are the pros and the cons? How to optimise the food producers' position?
• Certification and Organic Products
• Agro-food logistics: illustration of the value creation with innovative supply chain integration, multi-modality and co-operative operations.

This website is financed under the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) which aims to encourage the competitiveness of European enterprises.