Conference: Competitiveness of the European Agro-food industry

Why this European conference?

WHY this European Union conference in the Netherlands?

The European agro-food industry, a major global player, is currently facing deep economic, technological and regulatory changes. Also, the needs and expectations of consumers are evolving fast.

Numerous European programmes and resources are available to support the competitiveness of the industry and especially SMEs. Some of them are specifically fitted to the agro-food industry, with a view to helping the sector to grow and prosper.

Better knowledge and understanding of these instruments are prerequisites for an active participation of food industry in European projects that aim at sustaining the European food industry rank in the world and better feeding the world.

The Netherlands are one of the most agro-food intensive countries in the EU, with important exports, effective agro-food-logistics and a strong technology base.

WHY is it worth attending this conference?

Currently and in the future, significant changes are very likely to affect the economic environment of Food Industry at EU and world level:

1. The Common Agricultural Policy will be more and more 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 and the use of raw materials for non-food products increases so that scarcity of supply is now becoming a new risk.

WHY particularly SME's?

SMEs represent 99% of the number of food companies in Europe and employs more than 4 million people. Therefore, they have to play a key role in the effort to keep the European food sector competitive. Because of lack of ressources, SMEs leaders have hardly any time to enquire about European initiatives. Therefore, this conference will be an opportunity on the one hand for SMEs to improve their knowledge in the area of innovation and on the other hand for the Commission to better understand their concerns.

Issues and challenges

The main issues to be addressed in this conference are:

• Agro-food logistics, illustrating value creation via innovative supply chain integration, multi-modality and cooperative operations;
• Bio-based economy, whereby industry increasingly makes use of resources in a sustainable way through schemes such as clever management of entire natural cycles, consumption savings, waste management and recycling ;
• Food innovation, whereby novel food product properties are combined with consumer appeal attributes.

In this conference, Dutch and European business operators will share their experience in respect of these challenges.

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