2022 Regional Event Sweden

Alexandre Amaral is chief of international relations of Embrapa (The Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation), which is the in-house agency of Brazil Ministry of Agriculture. At Embrapa, he has been in charge of scientific cooperation and manager of strategic relations. He has been a research leader on biotechnology and has experience as visiting scientist at Rothamsted Research, University of Illinois, University of Wisconsin and Kansas State University. He has been a member of the Embrapa’s Labex programme, an overseas initiative to foster scientific cooperation with world-class institutions. He holds a PhD in molecular biology and is a researcher at Embrapa in biotechnology since 2002.

Agr Lic. Åsa Wolgast Broberg is Deputy Director at the Swedish Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation, department of Rural Affairs. She is coordinating the implementation and administration of the Swedish Rural Development Program and the subsequent national Strategic Plan of CAP. She is also responsible for the green architecture of the plans, as well as the Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System within them. After her Degree of Licentiate in Agricultural Science on Plant Production and Soil Science in 1999 she has also worked 10 years for the Federation of Swedish Farmers with property rights and agricultural environment and 7 years with public advisory service on the latter matter.

Thierry de l’Escaille was born in Belgium on 11 May 1955. He studied first at the Faculté Universitaire Saint-Louis, Brussels (1976-78), where he obtained the Diploma in Law, and then at the Université Catholique de Louvain (1978-1980), where he obtained the Licence en droit. He subsequently carried out his Military Service as a Cavalry Officer, 1^er Regiment de Guides (1981-1982) in Germany, current rank: Commandant. Since 1979 Thierry de l’Escaille has been running a family farming enterprise active in Belgium and the Netherlands, in particular in vegetables, sugar beet, potatoes, cereals and flowers. He was the founder of Agriland in 1985. Since 1994, Thierry de l’Escaille has been Secretary General of the European Landowners’ Organization (ELO).  He is also Vice-President of Landelijk Vlaanderen, Member of the Agricultural Reform Group (London), Board member of the Transatlantic Policy Network, Sorgho EU, Société Royale forestière, President Patrimoine Culturel Immobilier, Chairman of various funds. Since 1998 he is also Secretary General of Friends of the Countryside (FCS), and member of different committees. He is currently Member of the Board of several agro-industrial companies in Europe, America and involved in Africa. He is a founder of the Forum for the Future of Agriculture, of the Wildlife Estate Label and deeply committed in private conservation such as in reasonable agriculture. He is member of the Board of Directors of a major protected area in Latin America. President of the board in a work promoting rural development and supporting education of young rural citizens in Colombia. More information Website – www.elo.org Twitter – @EULandownersOrg Facebook – europeanlandowners LinkedIn – thierry-de-l-escaille-6728724

Pierre-Olivier Drège has been involved in many negotiations with the Common Agriculture Policy, as Chief of Cabinet of several French Ministers for Agriculture and as Director of the Department for International and Economical affairs in the French Ministry of Agriculture. He has also been in charge of implementing such policies as Managing Director of former French Wheat Board (ONIC). Since December 2016, he is the President of a cooperative of French forest owners operating in Normandy and in the North-East of France: Nord Seine Forêt. He is French and graduated as an engineer and economist.

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Algis Gaizutis is Chairman at Forest and Land Owners Association of Lithuania, which is the national interest organisation for the forest owners in Lithuania and has the status of an independent public NGO. FOAL is recognised national organisation in Lithuania and internationally.

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Tassos Haniotis recently retired, after a 33-year career in the Commission, as the Director of Strategy, Simplification and Policy Analysis in the Directorate General for Agriculture of the European Commission. He previously held posts as Head of Unit in the Agricultural Policy Analysis and Perspectives unit and the Agricultural Trade Policy Analysis unit in the same Directorate General, as Member and subsequently Deputy Head of the Cabinet of former European Commissioner for Agriculture Franz Fischler (with respective responsibilities the preparation of the 2003 reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, and the agricultural chapter of the Doha WTO Round and the EU-Mercosur negotiations), and as the Agricultural Counsellor of the European Commission’s Delegation in the United States. He holds Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Agricultural Economics from the University of Georgia, USA, and a B.A. in Economics from the Athens University of Economics and Business, in his native Greece. Before joining the European Commission, he spent six months as a visiting Fellow at the Centre for European Agricultural Studies, Wye College, University of London, focusing on EU-US agricultural trade relations in the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations. He hold a Honorary Doctorate degree from the University of Thessaloniki. Active in the ag research community, he is a member of the International and European Associations of Ag Economics, the International Agricultural Trade Research Consortium, and the EU Nitrogen Expert Panel.

Constantin Kinský is a Czech patron and financial advisor. He grew up in France, where he graduated from three universities and lived with his parents in Scotland for one year. He worked in the London and Paris branches of the Merill Lynch bank. In 1997, he returned to Moravia and manages the estate in Žďár nad Sázavou. He runs the family company Kinský Žďár, which manages 750 ha of ponds, forestry and agriculture. Since 2006, he has led a branch of the consulting firm Roland Berger. From 2011 to 2017, he chaired the French-Czech Chamber of Commerce. He is currently engaged in consulting in the financial sector on a freelance basis.

Carl-Henrik Ljung is Market Manager in Sweden for Syngenta and Chairman of the Board for the Swedish Crop Protection Association. He works close to the market and the practical challenges farmers are facing, in the daily work for Syngenta and with broader industry specific topics in the work for the Swedish Crop Protection Association.

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Tomas Lundmark's background is in silviculture and forest ecophysiology. His current research is about carbon sequestration and carbon balance of managed boreal forests, growth, yield and effects on biodiversity of even-aged vs. uneven-aged management and forest fertilization. His area of expertise is beside silviculture in the field of nature-based carbon removals (boreal forests), monitoring, reporting, and certification methodologies relevant to carbon removals. He has developed models to calculate a verifiable carbon sink in managed boreal forests at the estate level. He has far reaching experiences in research leadership and is well recognized in in the Swedish forest sector and regularly engaged in commissions of trust both by governmental agencies and by the forestry business sector in Sweden as well as internationally.

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Ladislav Miko was Deputy Director-General for the Food Chain in the European Commission’s health and food safety department (DG SANTE) since January 2011. His portfolio covered issues of food safety throughout the whole food chain, including plant and animal health, pesticides, biotechnology, food hygiene, nutrition and food sustainability. He was also acting Director-General in 2014 to 2015. From 2005 to 2010, he was Director for Nature in the Commission’s environment department. He was recently appointed special advisor to Czech Minister of Environment. During the Czech Presidency of the EU in 2009 he was appointed minister of the environment in the Czech government. Before he started his career in the Commission, he was deputy minister in the Czech environment ministry. Before that, he worked for nine years as a professional soil biologist in the Slovak Academy of Sciences. He holds a doctorate in zoology and ecology and he is Associate Professor of Prague University of Life Sciences and Guest Professor at University of Antwerp.

In January 2022 Emmanuelle Mikosz took the role of 'Forum for the Future of Agriculture' Programme Director. Previously she was the coordinator of the regional events of the Forum. For more than 15 years the Forum has been contributing to the debate on agriculture and the environment in Brussels and is now firmly established as the premier event of its type.

Since 2005 Emmanuelle Mikosz has been an ELO adviser specialised in property rights, agricultural and environmental policies dedicated to Central & Eastern European countries. Trained as a lawyer, she earned a Master of Arts degree from the College of Europe (Natolin). Emmanuelle is involved on a daily basis with the formulation of ELO members' positions regarding national land laws and management of enterprises. The European Landowners’ Organization - ELO asbl, created in 1972, is a unique federation of national associations from the EU27, which represents the interests of the landowners, land and forest managers and rural entrepreneurs at the European political level.
Emmanuelle is the Editor-in-Chief of the ELO bimonthly "Countryside Magazine", edited in English, French and Spanish. She is also an expert representing ELO at different international events as well as at the European Commission Civil dialogue groups or biogeographical consultations processes. She has a personal interest in innovation and research policies, including aviation and protection of data regulations. She believes that the future of European agriculture relies on sustainable development hand in hand with the protection of biodiversity and access to water.

Gabriel Mörner is a Swedish landowner and entrepreneur. He has been managing the family agricultural business since 2016 and before that he was an advisor on agriculture and forestry. He is a member of the Swedish Landowners Association and is the chairman of the forest committee in the Swedish Landowners Association. He was an expert in the governmental forest inquiry in 2019/2020.

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Gunnar Palme is President of the Swedish Landowners' Association, which was founded in 1960, and is the umbrella organization for five regional landowners' associations. Gunnar holds a Bachelor of law at the University of Stockholm and is the former President and CEO, Assi Domän AB and Munksjö AB; Former Vice President, Atlas Copco Group and former CEO and Chairman, Finn Power Oy, Finland. He is a member of many boards and is an Academy Member of the Royal Swedish Land and Forest Academy.

Dr Janez Potočnik graduated from the Faculty of Economics at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. After a successful career starting in 1989 in Slovenia as a researcher at the Institute of Economic Research, Director of the Institute of Macroeconomic Analysis and Development (1994), he was appointed Head of the Negotiating Team for the Accession of Slovenia to the EU (1998). He was also Director of Government Office for European Affairs (2000), Minister Councillor at the Office of the Prime Minister (2001) and Minister responsible for European Affairs (2002). In 2004 he joined the European Commission, first as "shadow Commissioner for Enlargement and then as Commissioner responsible for Science and Research. In 2010 Dr Potočnik became Commissioner for Environment. His term ended in November 2014 and he was appointed as a Co-Chair of UN Environment International Resource Panel and was also appointed as a Chairman of The Forum for the Future of Agriculture and RISE Foundation and a Member of the European Policy Centre's Advisory Council. From April 2016 he is also the Partner in SYSTEMIQ. More information Twitter – @JanezPotocnik22 Facebook – potocnikjanez LinkedIn - janez-potocnik-872470a7

Anna Richert is Senior Expert of Sustainable Food at WWF Sweden. She has extensive knowledge of food system aspects such as supply chain sustainability, consumer information and sustainable agriculture. Her work includes mobilizing consumers, corporates and decisionmakers for sustainable food systems.

Tiffanie Stephani is heading the Government Relations and External Communications at Yara Europe, the market leader in plant nutrition in Europe. Truly inspired by Yara’s vision of a world without hunger and a planet respected, Tiffanie works actively to promote climate-friendly crop nutrition and zero-emission energy solutions such as green ammonia and green fertilizers. She joined Yara Region Europe in January 2021.

Prior to this, Tiffanie has been working as Senior Agriculture and Environment Manager at Fertilizers Europe, representing the interests of the mineral fertilizer manufacturers in the European Union, between March 2016 and December 2020. She started her career in European Government Relations and in the agriculture sector 17 years ago as policy officer in the European & environmental affairs department of the German Farmers’ Association (Deutscher Bauernverband, DBV) in Brussels. Tiffanie (French native) holds a university degree in political science from “Sciences Po Lille” and a master degree in European public management.

Jurgen Tack studied biology (marine ecology) at Brussels Free University where he also obtained his PhD in Sciences. Within the Framework of the Kenya Belgium Project in Marine Sciences (Coastal Farms Kenya) he developed a number of oyster farms along the Kenyan coast. In 2000 he joined the team of the Belgian Biodiversity Platform (Belgian Science Policy Office). In 2007 he became the CEO of the Research Institute for Nature and Forest. In 2016 he took the position of Scientific Director at the European Landowners’ Organization (ELO), CEO at Landelijk Vlaanderen (Flemish Landowners’ Organisation) and CEO of the Aanspreekpunt Privaat Beheer Natuur en Bos. He was also President of the International Riverine Commission River Maas/Meuse, a member of the European Commission’s Expert Group on Nature Based Solutions and chairman of the board of directors of the Botanical Garden Meise. Since the beginning of 2017 he is evaluating the Nature Based Solution concept for the European Commission.