Setting the context
Mr. Vladimir Olegovich Rakhmanin, Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Europe and Central Asia, United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). A national of Russian Federation, he holds an M.Sc. in International Relations from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. His diplomatic and professional career has included assignments in Beijing (1982-83) and Washington D.C. (1983-86 and 1992-96). In 1998, Rakhmanin was appointed spokesperson for the Russian Federation’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Director of the Information and Press Department. From 2000 to 2002 he was Chief of Protocol for the President of the Russian Federation, and from 2002 to 2006 served as Ambassador of the Russian Federation in Dublin, Ireland. In the years prior to joining FAO, he was Deputy Secretary General of the Energy Charter Secretariat in Brussels.
Mr. Jaroslaw K. Ponder, Head of the Office for Europe at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) (Geneva, Switzerland), representing ITU in Europe and directing actions, projects, initiatives and experts groups targeting 46 countries of the Europe Region. His portfolio includes set of Regional Initiatives for Europe, designed by the European Member States and focusing on the ICT Infrastructure, Digitization, Digital Inclusion, Accessibility, Innovation and Cybersecurity. Along the professional career, Mr. Ponder held official positions in the public sector and was a contributor to the legislative projects having the impact on the public policy. Since 2014 Mr. Ponder has been working for ITU holding diverse positions in the General Secretariat, Telecommunication Development Bureau, and Regional Presence, addressing complexity of information society development and digital transformation at national, regional, international level, including United Nations level. For several years he has managed ITU’s work on the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) process, leading towards the establishment of the annual WSIS Forum, WSIS Prizes, WSIS Stocktaking, others.
Status of Digital Agriculture in Europe and Central Asia: Current innovation trends, opportunities and challenges
Ms. Sophie Treinen, Information and Knowledge Management Officer and Digital Agriculture Team Leader, FAO Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia. She provides assistance to the countries of the region addressing the role of information, communication and knowledge sharing. Her major responsibility is to develop approaches for developing institutional and individual capacities. She supports the development of a national digital agriculture strategy, and pays particular attention to systems, which make the most of digital and more conventional technologies to address stakeholders' needs. She is also applying participatory approaches and examining gender issues linked to the introduction of new digital Information and Communication Technologies. - Click here to access presentation
Mr.
Mihály Csótó, Digital Agriculture
Expert. Mihály is an agricultural
engineer and a sociologist. Currently, he is the managing director of Chelonian
Bt. and a digital literacy expert at the Governmental Agency for IT Development
(KIFÜ) in Hungary. He completed his doctoral studies at the Károly Ihrig
Doctoral School of Management and Business, University of Debrecen, with his
thesis on the diffusion of ICT innovations in small farms. Earlier on, he had
worked for the Information Society and Trend Research Institute at the Budapest
University of Technology and Economics for over 10
years on e-government, digital divide and e-agriculture. He has also served at
the Ministry of Public Administration and Justice in Hungary as an e-government
expert, and worked for the National University of Public Service, where he was
mainly involved in the evaluation of national public administration development
or digitization projects. He is one of the editors (and former editor-in-chief)
for the Hungarian scientific quarterly Információs Társadalom (‘Information
Society’), and a board member of the Hungarian Association of Agriculture
Informatics. - Click here to access presentation
Pitching of the outstanding practices in digital transformation of the agricultural sector and Awards Ceremony
Category 1 - Regulatory frameworks / Enhanced market access / Financial services and insurance:
Mr. Albin Ponnert is the founder and project manager of Local Food Nodes. He is also a trained documentary film-maker and hobby farmer, having founded the analogized Instagram project #enjoysweden, which became a photo book and a world-touring photo exhibition.
Mr. Aušrius Kučinskas is the Head of Direct Support Control Unit of the Control Department in NPA. He holds a Bachelor Degree in Agricultural Economics, and is responsible for control over the use of State and EU support funds for agriculture, rural development and fisheries, selection of applicants and beneficiaries for the on-the-spot checks and remote control, work coordination, and unified practice implementation at 10 territorial units of the NPA. For the past 3 years, he was involved in all NPA implemented projects regarding the usage of Copernicus data for area and agricultural practices monitoring. From 2012 to 2017, he was an expert on the Common Agricultural Policy for the Ministry of Agriculture, and since 2017, he is an adviser to the Methodology and Coordination Unit of the Agricultural Support Department, NPA. Since 2019, he is responsible for on-the-spot checks and remote sensing of Direct Support measures, including the implementation of Sentinel satellite data for checks and development of NMA Agro application, including monitoring compliance of agricultural practices with the EU CAP requirements. - Click here to access presentation
Mr. Filipe Leal is the CFO and co-founder of the award-winning Danish scale-up, Fresh.Land, which disrupts the food industry. Fresh.Land won the Think Global Award in 2021 and has previously been coined “truly pioneer in the new climate economy" by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Filipe is a former senior consultant at McKinsey with 4.5 years tenure. He served as the right hand to the CEOs of some of the biggest Energy, Telecom and Banking conglomerates globally. Filipe holds an MBA from INSEAD (12D) and before joining McKinsey, he won the first prize in the prestigious competition to be awarded the "Portuguese Manager of the Future". To give back, Filipe lectures at CBS and INSEAD and has coached 1000+ candidates pursuing careers within consulting. Filipe is the son of a farmer and his father Artur, was the first orange farmer to sell through Fresh.Land at the very beginning - today he has retired from farming.
Ms. Liudmyla Tymoshenko is the founder and CEO of AgriAnalytica LLC, holding a PhD in Economics, a Master's degree in Economy and organization of agricultural business from the Agricultural University, and a Master's degree in Business Administration from the International Management Institute. Over the past 10 years, she has been a leading expert on agricultural finance and innovative business tools in IFC, USAID and European Commission, with over 30 years of practical experience and proven successes both in agribusiness (from single production units to large multi-national companies) and international financial institutions. Her career combines both operational (crop production, livestock, processing of agricultural products, marketing, construction of the meat processing plant, grain elevator. fodder plant, breeding farm) and financial management in the agricultural sector, and she has also provided expert services to agribusiness owners, banks and investment funds on due diligence, investigation of financial and economic activity of companies, associated risks, financial analysis, development of credit policies and procedures, risk assessment tools and conducted training for loan officers as well as for agricultural producers. Her goal in founding AgriAnalytica LLC is to solve the problem of financial access for agro-MSME through innovation and synergy of all participants of the agroecosystem. - Click here to access presentation
Category 2 – Capacity development and empowerment
Ms. Lauren Dietemann, Communications and project manager at Research Institute of Organic Agriculture FiBL. Lauren is an agroecologist passionate about cultivating a more sustainable and equitable food system across the globe. Since 2020, she has been working at FiBL as a project manager and communication specialist. In this role, she works to bridge the gap between science and practice via effective communication and dissemination activities within international research projects. - Click here to access presentation
Mr. Eugene Ryazanov is the CEO of the AgroInformAsia company specialised in the development of IT tools for agriculture and business development. With over 25 years in both international development and private sectors, Eugene has experience in SME and sector development consultation, professional development, strategic implementation, and company collaboration. The company under his management became the finalist of the international competitions organised by the Eurasian Economic Committee 2019 and World Summit on the Information Society, 2021. Eugene holds PhD in economics and MBA. He is inspired daily by his wife and their three children. In his free time, Eugene likes to cycle and windsurf. - Click here to access presentation
Mr. Alexander Eine, CEO of FarmForesight, is an experienced IT startups and projects creator and manager with a marketing and sales background in international companies, as well as an expert in staff training gamification and business processes modeling. Since 2013, he is a co-founder and CEO of software development company Fast&Curious. From 2018, he became the CEO of FarmForesight, which is a business modeling simulator for commodity crops production. He has also participated in many international startups as a technical and marketing consultant and as an investor.
Mr. Manuel Silveira is the founder of Ruralbit, a company that develops software for agriculture, mostly for animal production, and acts as a pioneer in the development of online platforms in agriculture. The company is 15 years old, with 6 employees and clients in Portugal, Spain and USA. He has always had close contact with the challenges of small-scale farming and of living in a remote region since his childhood days. He obtained a University Degree in Agronomy from Instituto Superior de Agronomia in Lisbon, and completed his MSc in Animal Production at Aberdeen University in Scotland. He has worked on a project on the characterization of autochthonous cattle breeds, where he contacted indigenous breeds while encountering challenges in data collection and processing. He currently develops simple software solutions for cattle farms and studbooks of Portuguese breeds, and manages his family farm focusing on pure breed cattle. - Click here to access presentation
Category 3 – Agriculture innovations systems and sustainable farming - Farm automation, robots, drones
Mr. Michael Fontanin, Marketing and Communication Director at VitiBot since March 2020. From marketing and communication, which he has been practicing for 15 years, to technical direction, through artistic direction, he is passionate about everything that his job can bring him every day. The taste for challenge, the desire to learn every day, to make enriching encounters are, among other things, his daily motivations in his work. He is committed to bringing his expertise to the services of others. Sensitive to the environmental cause, he tries to implement good everyday practices to bring a better future to his children. - Click here to access presentation
Prof. Dr.‐Ing. Stephan Hussmann is a Professor in the area of microprocessor technology and electronic systems with the Faculty of Engineering in the West Coast University of Applied Sciences (FHW), Heide, Germany. Prior to this, he received his M.E. and PhD degrees from the University of Siegen, and became a Lecturer with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, a Research Associate with the Center for Sensor Systems at the University of Siegen, and a Development Engineer with Aicoss GmbH, Siegen. He founded the registered association “Initiative Bildverarbeitung e.V." where he is still the acting chairman. The association organizes regular lectures where industry partners and University members come together to discuss potential joint working groups or joint projects. He has also founded and leads the research group “Digitalization in agriculture and forestry", with the aim to develop solutions for automated non‐chemical weed control systems. He has widely consulted with the industry and has over 80 publications, including books, book chapters, international patents, and refereed journal and conference proceedings papers. - Click here to access presentation
Mr. Vasily Nikolaevich Ptitsyn, General Director and Co-founder of LLC "Fly and See Agro”, is an expert in the field of civil use of unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs), engineer-inventor, specialist in biological protection of plants with entomophages, consultant in the field of organizational development, and a business coach. He graduated from the postgraduate course of the Department of Political Science and Political Management, Kuban State University, and is a researcher in the field of manipulation of mass consciousness. Vasily was also engaged in the development and implementation of innovative educational technologies for adults, implemented 26 long-term consulting projects, and has been managing a company that deals with biological plant protection using UAVs since 2016. The Flyseeagro project began the first experiments on the use of UAVs for agricultural operations, and in 2019, they received a patent for the invention “Method of application of bulk preparations for plant protection and a complex for its implementation”. In 2021, he filed an application for the invention "A method for protecting plants with entomophages in the "nymph" phase and a complex for its implementation". - Click here to access presentation in English , Click here to access presentation in Russian
Mr. F
ran Guillén, Co-founder, Brioagro Tech. Fran. is a computer engineer and one of the founding partners of BrioAgro Technologies. He has 15 years of experience launching and developing projects of digital economy and real economy. Fran has won the biggest hackathon in history called #EUvsVirus, organized by the European Commission, and is a winner of the startup competition of the World Business Angel Forum (WBAB) 2020 Istanbul. As a serial entrepreneur he has founded several companies throughout his life and currently, Fran is the Director of Impulsame.es, a business accelerator program in Spain. Fran is the author of the podcast AcelerandoEmpresas.com and also an advisor/investor in several startups like PlusVitech, Opositores.net, Incrementa, etc. Fran is also Senator for Spain of the World Business Angel Forum (WBAF), member of the Andalusian Business Angels Association (AABAN), and also participates as a guest teacher in University of Seville and University Pablo de Olavide. Recently, Fran has published his first book called Paso de Gigante, a fable about entrepreneurship that has created great expectation published by ANAYA (3rd editorial group in Spain). - Click here to access the presentation
Category 4 - Agriculture innovations systems and sustainable farming - Specific solutions
Mr. Bogdan Iordache, Founder & CEO, Apiary Book An entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in the IT industry and a passionate beekeeper. Right now he is using all his knowledge to develop innovative technology-based products and services in the AgriFood industry. - Click here to access presentation
Mr. Vadym Kochevykh is the co-founder of i-bee, responsible for the regular operations of i-bee products, including strategy development, marketing, hardware and software upgrades, sales activities, as well as project management in software and hardware development. He received his International Relations Lyceum in Kyiv, and completed his master's degree in intelligent decision systems. His experiences include working as a web developer in a websites development company, a sales manager in an IT company, and then becoming the general manager in SATTRANS, a Ukrainian GPS tracking services company with 50+ employees. He has also founded IT INNOVATIONS, focusing on the development of IoT, software and providing integration services. Several IoT products were created, including i-bee, which is an IoT for hive monitoring in beekeeping. - Click here to access presentation
Mr. Rudy Ebbekink is Global Marketing Manager at Nedap Livestock Management and is responsible for the worldwide marketing of Nedap's livestock management technology. Growing up in the countryside in the Netherlands and being a technology fanatic, he has been passionate about the agricultural sector and technological innovation from a young age. Especially how technology can help farmers to be happier and more successful in their professional lives. For Ebbekink and many of his colleagues, this is the day-to-day motivation to work on solutions that help farmers run their businesses in a profitable, sustainable and enjoyable way. - Click here to access presentation
Category 5 – Agriculture innovations systems and sustainable farming - Connected farm management systems
Ms. Oksana Hrynevych is the project manager of Agricolus. She is a PhD candidate in applied economics at the University of Cadiz, Spain, and earned Master degrees in "Project management" and "Management of International Business and Trade" in Odesa, Ukraine. As a part of Agricolus team works in the Marketing and sales department being responsible for the economic and business part of the projects. Current research and professional activities are related to social and solidarity economy principles implementation, exploring of public policies and business initiatives aimed at sustainable territorial development, digital transformation of agriculture. - Click here to access presentation
Mr. Riccardo De Nadai is the Content marketing manager for xFarm. He graduated in Agricultural Sciences and technologies with a final research project on the digitisation of agriculture. Currently, he is attending the Master of Science in Sustainable Agriculture at the University of Padua. Passionate about science communication, he has written on social media and magazines about sustainability and digital transformation in agriculture for many years. - Click here to access presentation
Mr. Matija Zulj is the founder and CEO of AGRIVI, with the vision to change the way food is produced and positively impact over a billion lives. Today, AGRIVI helps Fortune 1000 companies across the globe to produce nutritious, healthy, and sustainably grown food by digitalizing their crop production and agriculture supply chains. He is recognized as an impact entrepreneur and leader in the fields of foodtech, agtech and building sustainable food systems. Matija has experience in giving keynote speeches on major global conferences and corporate events on topics that popularize digital agriculture, and with his thought leadership activities, he advocates for sustainable food systems, the future of food, novel food business models, agritech, foodtech, digitalization of the agri-food industry, AI in agriculture, start-up eco-systems, entrepreneurship, and motivation. Matija is also a Faculty Council Member for the International Digital Agriculture Study at University of Osijek, an Advisory Board Member at European Carbon Farmers, and a Mentor at Women in Food and Agriculture where he supports young female talents in achieving their personal growth.
Ms. Rada Klimenko is a Business Development Executive who helps to build partnerships between OneSoil, the agrotech startup, and agribusiness companies around the world. Before moving to agritech, Rada spent 5 years in the online travel industry, being in the role of Business Development Executive in Go Travel Un Limited (Aviasales.ru and Jetradar.com, the flight metasearch engines, international travel network Travelpayouts), running the strategy of the cooperation and leading the deals with the major players in the airline industry in Russia, the CIS, North America, Middle East, India, China. - Click here to access presentation
Category 6 – Disaster risk management and early warning systems
Ms. Spasenija Gajinov, Product Manager of DunavNET, holds MSc degree in the area of plant protection from the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Novi Sad. She has more than 15 years of experience in the agriculture domain, mainly working on monitoring diseases and pests affecting the public greenery and the plants in the city's plant nursery as well as supporting farmers to protect the crops in the most efficient manner. She is active in promoting the use of new technologies in agriculture and is collaborating with several organizations regarding the chemical control of plant diseases and pests. In DunavNET, Spasenija holds the position of a strategic product manager for agriculture and is responsible for the development of the agroNET suite of solutions, maintaining relationships with relevant stakeholders and clients and coordination of plot deployments. - Click here to access presentation
Mr. Tor-Einar Skog, Software developer and architect for several NIBIO websites that cover several topics such as Integrated Pest Management, pesticides, nitrogen fertilizing, weather data, weather forecasts, pest prediction models, pests, and pathogens. These websites include services such as VIPS, AgroMet Norway, The Encyclopedia of Plant Protection, The Plant Protection Guide, Nitrogen fertilizer calculators, and more. He is also a project leader of a capacity-building project on Artificial Intelligence, and a senior advisor for VIPS at NIBIO. - Click here to access presentation
Mr. Michael Bruniaux, CEO and Co-founder of Sencrop. He is a computer engineer by training, and a technophile and an entrepreneur at heart. In 2016, he co-founded the start-up Sencrop, which in 5 years will become the leader in ag-weather data in France.
Mr. Gottfried Pessl, Founder and CEO of Pessl Instruments, which is a leading company in IoT for agriculture. Pessl recognized technology as an inevitable part of the future of farming and founded the company in 1984. He started building the METOS brand in a time when the importance of precision agriculture wasn't as obvious or important as it is today. After 37 years, he still has a tight grip on things and is driving the METOS brand further. He enjoys visiting customers, partners and distributors frequently and is often invited to speak at international conferences. He is a trained agronomist and banker, and to him, everything runs like clockwork, only a bit faster. His dream is to have more time for his family, his wife and his son, and his grandchildren. - Click here to access presentation
Category 7 – Food loss and waste / Food safety and traceability
Prof. Dr. Metin TURAN, CEO of Farmer Expert and has worked at Cornell University in New State of the United States, Hohenheim University in Stuttgart, Germany, University of Padova, Italy, Helsinki University in Finland, National Taiwan University in Taiwan. He still continues as a faculty member at Yeditepe University, Department of Genetics and Bioengineering. The main subjects of study are organic agriculture, food safety, waste management, biological fertilizers and control methods, and over 200 SCI publications on soil management, ecological environment, global warming and carbon footprint, waste management, plant nutrition and quality criteria, organic agriculture and good agricultural practices, 5 books and 18 book chapters, more than 300 international conferences and articles. He managed 15 international projects and more than 100 national projects. It has 20 patented products on organic fertilizer and biological control issues. - Click here to access presentation
Ms. Tessa Clarke, Co-Founder & CEO of OLIO, a free app tackling the problem of food waste by connecting neighbours with each other, and volunteers with local businesses, so that surplus food can be given away, not thrown away. OLIO has grown to 5 million users in just over 5 years, and its impact has been widely recognised, most notably by the United Nations who highlighted OLIO as a "beacon" for the world, and by Vivatech who awarded OLIO "Next European Unicorn". Prior to OLIO, Tessa had a 15-year corporate career as a digital Managing Director in the media, retail and financial services sectors, and she met her co-founder Saasha whilst they were studying for their MBAs at Stanford University. Tessa is passionate about the sharing economy as a solution for a sustainable world, and about 'profit with purpose' as the next business paradigm. - Click here to access presentation
Mr. Andrii Karpiuk, CEO of BIOsens, has extensive experience in product management. Andrii was awarded as “2018 Emerging Biotech Leader of Ukraine", U.S.-Ukraine Foundation, 2019, and with a team of BIOsens won 1st place at Intercontinental Startup Battle by Startup.Network in San Francisco. Moreover, he has 5 scientific publications on biotech and 3 patents.
Moderators of the pitching segment:
Mr. Valentin Nagy, Junior Technical Officer on Digitalization in Agriculture at FAO Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia. Having been involved in agricultural activities from a young age, he worked in agriculture on-field or farm level, and graduated as an agricultural engineer from the University of Debrecen, Hungary. He has been a production coordinator intern in maize, paprika and tomato production on different sizes of farms, and first joined FAO as a project assistant.
Ms. Sarah Delporte, Project Officer in charge of the UN Affairs and UN Partnerships at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Office for Europe. Prior to joining the ITU, she had several experiences in the communication and marketing sectors. She holds a double master's degree in Public Policy and Human Development from the UNU-MERIT, specialized in social entrepreneurship and public policy, as well as a bachelor's degree in communication and marketing. She has also followed journalism training. She is passionate about applying innovative and integrative solutions to create a sustainable and inclusive future for all.
Moderators for the Awards Ceremony segment:
Mr. Farid Nakhli, Programme Coordinator, ITU Office for CIS. Farid received his Master of technical sciences degree in the Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics in 2009. From 2008 to 2015 Farid worked in the system of the Ministry of Communication and Informatization of the Republic of Belarus managing projects on nation-wide ICT strategy and policy analysis, monitoring of ICT infrastructure and e-government development, regulation and standardisation, and development of relevant software. In 2015 he joined the Corporate Strategy Division of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) as Planning and Management Consultant. Since 2016 Farid works as Programme Coordinator and later as Programme Coordinator at the ITU Regional Office for CIS based in Moscow, where his responsibilities include ICT strategy and policy advise, management of projects on ICT development and organization of regional events. Recognized profession credentials include: CCNP (Cisco certified network professional) – 2012; PMP (Project management professional) – 2014. Speaks Russian, English, French and Belarusian.
Mr. Thembani Malapela, Knowledge and Information Management Officer, Digital agriculture and Innovation team in FAO Office of Innovation. The scope of his team is to support the digital agriculture capacity development activities in FAO members; support FAO members in formulating the National Digital Agriculture Policies; and supports the upscale of digital technologies via FAO frameworks such as the MoUs and partnerships. Additionally, Thembani is the platform manager for the e-Agriculture Community of Practice, a 20,000 global network of digital agriculture and innovation professionals. In the FAO-ITU's “Digital Excellence in Agriculture in Europe and Central Asia" study, Thembani is part of the selection panel for the submissions received and supports the publication of the report. Again, with ITU Geneva office, Thembani coordinates a technical team for the publication of “Status of Digital Agriculture in 47 Sub-Saharan Africa" report, expected later this year.
