Germany - Networks for healthy food

Promoting fair, healthy and local food production - co-operation project between Unser Land and WECF members

Country:	Germany
Donors / Program:	European Commission, DG Environment
WECF Partners:	Unser Land, ZijActief
Issues:	Agriculture and Food
Duration:	02/2006 - 07/2010

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Background

Unser Land is a successful cooperation of over 200 farmers, bakers, butchers, supermarkets, churches and citizen's organisations in Bavaria, Germay. Together they promote sustainable rural development.

Farmers produced food products under the quality criteria of Unser Land and can then sell their products with the Unser Land label. The supermarkets, bakers and butchers provide space in their shops to sell the Unser Land products. The citizen's organisations promotes the label and concept among consumers through events and other PR actions.

Unser Land is a member of WECF and transfers it's knowledge to the WECF agricultural working group.

WECF goals

Networking and information and knowledge exchange are essential ingredients to the work of WECF. In Unser Land WECF has found a strong, creative and reliable partner for developing joint projects, information and knowledge.

WECF implementation

WECF and Unser Land use training sessions, visits and publications to transfer knowledge and experiences between the Unser Land partners and groups in project countries, such as the Ukraine.

A visit in 2005 by Ukrainian farmers was a great success for all involved and was followed by a similar visit in the Ukraine.



The training sessions provide a variety of information:

• Ecology: what does it mean?
• The bigger picture: networking and rural development
• Sustainable Rural Development: What themes?

More than 40 farmers and members of Unser Land and WECF met for a 4-day-training conference in Furstenfeldbruck, Germany. They came from Ukraine, Armenia, Germany, Switzerland, Romania, the Netherlands and Spain and visited Unser Land farmers, bakers and supermarkets, discussed problems and benefits of biofuels and organic farming, and pledge partnerhips between the farmers from the EU and the new neighbour states.

The conference produced 2 statements by the WECF agriculture working group and Unser Land members, these can be downloaded here.

• Statement on energy and biofuels
• Statement on Sustainable Rural Development

WECF member Isabel Ripa from Spain, has prepared 6 fact sheets with usefull information on EU funding programmes for sustainable rural development, and developments in EU agricultural policy.

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News on this project

German-Polish exchange to promote sustainable rural development; WECF and Bavarian partner visit Polish region of Mazovia (Text auf Deutsch) Deutsch-polnischer Austausch zur Förderung nachhaltiger, ländlicher Entwicklung 07.08.2009

Salon ACCESS 2009 Anne Masse, Conference WECF France invited a German partner tot present a project on local, equal and fair trade: "Unser Land" 14.05.2009

Frauenansichten 2008/ Women's Views 2008 (text in German) Ein Lesekalender zu Umwelt und Gesundheit. Erfahrungen, Einschätzungen, Praxistipps; a calendar in bookform about women, the environment and our health; 12.12.2007

Recht auf Schutz vor Gentechnik - auch für Ihren Mais! Newsletter on GMOS (text in German) 11.05.2007

Open Letter on GMOs An open letter to German minister Miller on stopping GMO tests. (Text in German) 17.03.2007