Ulster Farmers’ Union (UFU) president David Brown and parliamentary officer Alexander Kinnear, attended the Copa-Cogeca congress in Šibenik, Croatia. It’s the tenth edition of the congress of European farmers which begun on Wednesday 12 October – Sunday 16 October. The main conference topics are food security and food affordability, which are now two critical elements to retain in the transformation of food systems.
Maria Didukh, director of the Ukrainian National Agrarian Forum spoke at the event. She described the attacks on Ukrainian farms, including the theft of much needed, expensive machinery and equipment. Fields have been mined to prevent cultivation. In other areas, 20 percent less spring crops were sown and potentially up to 40 percent of winter crops may not be sown. They have limited access to export grain, approximately only six million tonnes during August/September. This has led to poor prices for farmers internally in Ukraine and concerns globally for food security, due to the inability to get grain and produce out of Ukraine.
It's vitally important that moving forward, the UFU continues to engage with Copa-Cogeca as European policy still applies in Northern Ireland affecting local farmers.
Copa (the Committee of Professional Agricultural Organisations) represents over 22 million European farmers and their family members in a combined effort with its members to promote the best interests of the agricultural sector among the EU institutions and other relevant stakeholders.
