2021 Carbon Farming: linking agriculture with climate and biodiversity goals

Georg Goeres has lived in five different European countries over his 24-year career, strategizing for and achieving success in the agricultural industry. For the past 15 years, Goeres worked in various leadership roles for Syngenta, including head of commercial operations and strategy, where he was responsible for the implementation of business strategy and market development in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. At Indigo, Goeres drives a rollout plan that supports grower profitability, environmental sustainability and consumer health across the continent.

Béla Jankovich de Jeszenice is active on the crossroads of agriculture, the environment and technical and social innovation. Béla is leading the operations of the family estate ‘Jankovich Birtok’. In addition, Béla is Chair of the Board of non-profit organisation Commonland, driving Commonland’s mission to support restoration of 100 million hectares of degraded landscapes by 2040 with its proven holistic approach. Béla is an advisor to Anterra Capital, a global Venture Capital Fund focused on food and agriculture technologies, and an active investor and Board member of AgroVIR Kft, a regional leader in farm management software.

Jelmer works for Rabobank to develop innovative, meaningful and pragmatic solutions in the Food & Agri domain. He is responsible for project Acorn that supports smallholder farmers in the transition to agroforestry supported with additional income from Carbon Removal Units that are verified with the help of remote sensing to allow for scale. As former strategy consultant he has ample experience in bringing strategy into practice. During his period at World Food Programme he experienced farmer needs in developing countries at first hand.

Marc Rosiers holds a Master of Science in Economics from the KU Leuven (1980). In 1981 he became Master of Science in Economics at the London School of Economics. He can look back on 25 years of experience as internal consultant and board member in agri-food companies and professional associations such as there are Agri Investment Fund, Boerenbond, etc. Since 2016 he is managing director of MR F&A Consult which serves its clients with independent, evidence based and applicable advice on strategic management and public affairs and lobbying issues. In this capacity, he is an advisor to the ELO European Policy Group.

Valentina Sechi  is a soil scientist specialised on soil ecology and functionality. She works as associate professor at the University of applied sciences Van Hall Larenstein where she coordinates research activities within the EU Interreg project Carbon Connects which aims to enhance the implementation of sustainable wet-agriculture in drained peatland. Valentina works also as Scientific Project Manager at Wetsus - European centre of excellence for sustainable water technology, where she coordinates and supervises PhD projects on resource recovery and organic matter increase in soils.

Developing and finding sustainable management solutions addressing the complexity of achieving food and nutritional security, sustainable agricultural development, the conservation of nature, biodiversity and agro-ecosystem functioning has been at the core of Rolf’s work ever since. This includes protecting or rehabilitating soil fertility and health at field level, improving the livelihoods of smallholders through improved, competitive and eco-efficient productions systems at farm level, biodiversity, nature and landscape protection and rehabilitation at the watershed /regional level, and carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation at global scale. Rolf holds a PhD in Agronomy and a MSc in Biology, and in the last 20 years have published over 50 peer-reviewed articles and numerous conference proceedings and online publications

Nicola Di Virgilio, policy analyst, Seconded National Expert of the National Research Council of Italy at the EU Commission DG Agriculture and Rural Development, in the unit “Environment, climate change, forestry and bioeconomy”. His PhD was on sustainable use of agricultural lands. He graduated at the University of Bologna (IT) on Agricultural Science and Technologies. Main topics: climate change and agriculture, decision supporting tools for farmers, agronomy of non-food crops.