The conference “Development of Primary Production and Access to the European Market” was held in Tskaltubo, Georgia on 26-27th of November, 2019. The conference was organized by consulting company GDCI in partnership with online agro portal Kalo. The support was provided by the Embassy of the Kingdom of Netherlands and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
Noteworthy to mention that the agriculture is identified as one of the highest priorities by Georgian government. Fresh fruits and vegetables especially fresh berries, kiwi, culinary herbs produced in Georgia do have the potential to be exported to EU. Therefore the aim of the conference was to provide the platform for fresh fruits and vegetable primary production representatives to discuss the issues and obstacles related to the development of primary production. The key topics covered included:
legislation changes such as plant protection, food safety, waste management, seed/seedling certification covered by the representatives of various government agencies.
requirements and trends of EU market was presented by Piet Schotel of Fruit Consultancy from The Netherlands.
the organization of cold storages was presented by the experts from Ukraine (Julia Timoshenko and Sergii Makarchuk).
The second day of the conference was dedicated to the visits at local agrifood companies Agrolane Ltd (cold storage) and Imereti Greenery (vegetable greenhouse) for getting hand-on experience. The visits were highly appreciated by the participants.
The conference was attended by the farmers, representatives of cold storages, government officials, various institutions (educational, consulting, certification and etc.). Overall the conference called high attention as 87 people attended the conference.
