2026 Market outlook workshop Day 2

Carlos Aragonés is Director, Production Systems, Region 2 at John Deere, following his previous role as Director Dealer Development. With more than two decades of experience at John Deere, he has held leadership positions across sales, marketing, business management, and dealer development. An Agricultural Engineer by education, and originally from Seville, Spain, Carlos brings a strong customer focus, passion for innovation and cross-functional leadership.

Barry Cowen was elected in June 2024 to the European Parliament as an MEP for the Midlands North-West constituency. He now serves on the European Parliament’s Agriculture and International Trade committees where he focuses on securing better outcomes for farmers, advancing renewable energy and safeguarding Ireland’s pro-enterprise economy.

A native of county Offaly, Barry has over three decades of experience in public office, beginning as a local councillor and later serving as a member of Dáil Éireann from 2011 to 2024 where he represented the Laois-Offaly constituency.

During his time in national politics, Barry held several prominent roles within Fianna Fáil, including key spokesperson and Programme for Government negotiating team positions, as well as serving as Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine in 2020.

Peter Frölich is a Swiss farmer, agricultural entrepreneur and specialist in regenerative and precision agriculture. He has a long-standing involvement in developing and applying technology and data-driven approaches to farming. Earlier in his career he was closely associated with AgriCircle, a Swiss agricultural technology business, and participated in research projects involving precision agriculture and agricultural robotics.

His agricultural interests have increasingly focused on regenerative farming, soil health and the transition towards more resilient agricultural systems. He is also a co-founder of the European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture (EARA) and is publicly described as a Swiss farmer.

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. Tassos is Sustainable Productivity Adviser for the Forum for the Future of Agriculture and a Senior Guest Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. 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.

François Kayitakire is Head of the Food Security Unit within the Sustainable Resources Directorate of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, based in Ispra, Italy. He leads the JRC's work on global food and nutrition security assessment, early warning and resilience measurement, providing independent, science-based support to EU policy on humanitarian response and international development.

François holds a PhD and has spent much of his career applying remote sensing, geospatial analysis and statistical methods to food security and disaster-risk challenges, with a particular focus on Sub-Saharan Africa and other developing regions. Earlier in his career he worked on crop and forest monitoring using satellite imagery, before moving into food and nutrition security assessment, where he built up the JRC's Food Security (FOODSEC) team, working on early warning systems that draw on satellite imagery and meteorological data to flag emerging food security crises.

Dr. Leonard Mizzi is Adviser Food Systems in DG INTPA following almost 20 years of management roles in DG AGRI and DG INTPA. He has a PhD in agricultural economics from the University of Reading and is also a graduate from CIHEAM Montpellier and the University of Malta. He is an expert on agrifood systems at local, regional and global level with a special emphasis on the Rome based agencies in particular FAO and IFAD.

Dr. Mizzi has a broad working experience in the Maltese public administration and the Maltese private sector. He first worked in the Economic Planning Division of the Office of the Prime Minister (Malta) and from 1996-2006 was the first Director of the Malta Business Bureau in Brussels- the office of the Malta Chamber of Commerce and Enterprise and the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association.

He was also visiting lecturer at the Boston University (Brussels campus), Open University and Malta University. He often lectures at the College of Europe in Bruges.

His areas of specialisation are global food security governance, agriculture and food and nutrition security, the Mediterranean and Sub Saharan Africa.

Koen Mondelaers, PhD, ir, currently Deputy Head of Unit of the Data Governance Unit in DG Agriculture and Rural Development, European Commission. I’m also statistical correspondent for DG AGRI, liaising with Eurostat and National Statistical Institutes. With the Data Governance unit we work on data integration, on digitalisation and on AI, both in DG AGRI and in agriculture. We maintain the Agrifood Data Portal, where you can find all kinds of data on agricultural markets, on CAP policy indicators and many more. Previously I held positions in the International unit, as Deputy Head of Unit and working on Brexit, and the Analysis and Outlook unit of DG AGRI, doing modelling and impact analysis. After my PhD in agricultural economics at Ghent University, I worked at ILVO, the Institute for Agriculture and Fisheries Research, part of the Flemish administration, where I headed a team of researchers and PhD students working on the economics and sustainability of the agrifood and fisheries value chain. I’m passionate about the stories that are hidden within data.

Alain-Dominique Quintart is the Head of Government & Public Affairs Europe and the Head of Syngenta Brussels office.  He joined the Brussels office in September 2007. He previously held senior management positions with Syngenta, Global Head for the worldwide Flowers Seeds activity, Country Head for Syngenta Crop Protection in Belgium and Portugal, Marketing Head in France and in Switzerland for the European Region. He started his career with Syngenta in 1991 in the UK as European Product Manager for Animal Health. Alain-Dominique Quintart has been involved in managing mergers and acquisitions, setting business strategies and ensuring their implementation and delivery. He has a Master of Science in Engineering from UCLouvain and an MBA from Insead.

Varda Foundation are are a nonprofit technology platform enabling farm & field data sharing to support the transition to a global nature-positive food system

Simone graduated in Information & Communication Technology in 2007 and also has a PhD in Crop Production in 2010 from the University of Milan. Since then, he has been working on the nexus of digital technologies and agriculture through initiatives in more than 20 countries across multilateral organizations, academia, and the private sector.

Since March 2025 Emanuele has been a Policy Officer at DG Clima. Previously Emanuele joined Cargill’s Government Relations Team in 2017 where he focused on EU Climate, Energy & Environment policy, contributing to advancing Cargill’s sustainability agenda by promoting decarbonization in agriculture, manufacturing, and energy.

Before that Emanuele was working for FuelsEurope (European Petroleum Refiners Association) already focusing on Emission Trading System and international climate negotiations and before that he has also collaborated with IsAG (Istituto di Alti Studi in Geopolitica e Scienze Ausiliarie), Rome-based think tank and published a report titled: “Energy Security and the role of Natural Gas”.

He holds a Master’s degree cum laude in International Relations from the University of Rome, La Sapienza and a post-graduate Master’s in European Studies from the Université Catholique de Louvain and the European Desk of the Belgian-Italian Chamber of Commerce. Emanuele has recently completed the Executive Programme Leadership in Commodity Trade & Supply Networks offered by Erasmus University, in partnership with Singapore Management University and the J.P. Morgan Center for Commodities.

Emanuele speaks Italian, English, French and Portuguese. When he is not working, you may find him cooking, playing the guitar or riding his motorbike.

Spiro Stefanou is Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics, Pennsylvania State University, and was most recently Acting Deputy Undersecretary, Research, Education and Economics, United States Department of Agriculture. Before that he was Administrator of the Economic Research Service where he provided leadership and guidance for the strategic direction of the agency research, analytical, and technical operations. Prior to his arrival at ERS, he was Professor and former Chair of the Food and Resource Economics Department at the University of Florida, and Professor of Agricultural Economics at Penn State University. He is a Fellow of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association and held visiting positions at universities in Greece, Netherlands, Italy, Austria. Dr. Stefanou is a past editor of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics and Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy and has served on the editorial boards of six national and international journals.

Ricard Ramon is the Head of Unit in charge of policy perspectives at DG AGRI (European Commission). He is currently working on the CAP for the period post-2027, the new Multi-annual Financial Framework (MFF) as well as the future Farmland Observatory and the on-farm sustainability compass. For the last 25 years he worked on strategy, analysis, design and implementation of agricultural policy in the EU. He has been directly involved on the policy design and negotiations of the last three reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), as well as the preparation and approval of the current CAP Strategic Plans for the period 2022-2027. More recently, he was part of task force which supported the works of the Strategic Dialogue on the Future of EU Agriculture (2024) and coordinated the works on the Vision for Agriculture and Food (2025), which defines the strategic roadmap for the future actions of the Commission for the years ahead. He studied at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the London School of Economics.

Mark is a Co-founder and a former Director of the Forum for the Future of Agriculture. He is now a Member of the Forum’s Advisory Council and a Senior Fellow at the Transatlantic Policy Network. Mark joined SpiritsEUROPE as their Director-General in September 2025, having enjoyed a long career in the agri-food sector, principally at Syngenta where he held several senior leadership and executive level positions in corporate affairs and business sustainability in the EAME region and globally. After leaving Syngenta in 2017, Mark became the CEO of EngineeringUK before joining Indigo Ag, where he held a variety of different roles before becoming Head of Corporate Affairs and a Member of the Executive Team in 2024.