During our first study visit in Rome, we met representatives of the AIAB (Italian Association for Organic Agriculture), FederBio (Italian federation of organic and biodynamic agriculture) and Bioagricert (Private certification and control body). AIAB promotes a participatory approach in organic farming, since it connects researchers with farmers and consumers and the AIAB president, Mr. Vincenzo Vizioli stated that organic farming can contribute to both climate change adaptation and mitigation. Moreover, social aspect of farming is promoted, since they are doing efforts to include marginalized people (people with social exclusion problems successfully entering the local society) in organic farming. It is important that AIAB is a partner of the SOLMACC project, which aims to promote the wider adoption of innovative practices that can contribute to reaching the EU’s climate change mitigation and adaptation objectives in the food and farming sector and the idea of a jointed meeting/workshop of ORGANIKO with SOLMACC was proposed.

Mr. Roberto Pinton, the secretary of processing and trading group of FederBio, introduced the integrity platform, which shows all steps of a product from production to consumption; so that it is certified that all appropriate procedures are followed. It is free for farmers while companies need to pay a small amount of money (0.70 euro per month). The idea of potential Cyprus-Italy non-governmental co-operation projects was proposed.

Mr. Donato Ferucci, the Head of Bioagricert Lazio followed, with a presentation on the control and certification system of organic agriculture in Italy and he noted that the certification is a regulated, product- and production chain-oriented procedure based on authorization principles.