Helga Willer works at the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture FiBL, Department of Extension, Training & Communication, where she leads the project communication group. She has been collecting and publishing key data on organic agriculture in the yearbook “The World of Organic Agriculture” since 2000. Recent developments include interactive online databases and visuals to make the data better accessible. The annual survey on organic agriculture covers land areas, including land use, production, retail sales and international trade. More than 180 countries contribute to the survey.
Keynote presentation: The state and evolution of organic fruit and vegetables: production and market at world scale (5.5 MB)

Session 2: Organic nutrition (plant): experience, and new directions

Marc-André Selosse is professor at Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (Paris), and at Universities of Kunming (China) and Gdansk (Poland). His research focuses on the ecology and evolution of mycorrhizas, a major symbiosis between soil fungi and roots of most land plants. He also has a general interest in symbiosis and its evolution. He was head of the French Botanical Society for ten years and is now president of the Fédération BioGée, member of the French Academy of Agriculture and editor of four international scientific journals: New Phytologist, Ecology Letters, Symbiosis and Botany Letter. All his papers (more than 190 scientific papers and 190 outreach papers) are downloadable at http://isyeb.mnhn.fr/en/directory/marc-andre-selosse-405. He has published 3 outreach books in French on microbiota  (Jamais seul, 2017), tannins (Les goûts et les couleurs du monde, 2019) and soil (L’origine du Monde, 2021). Website: https://isyeb.mnhn.fr/en/directory/marc-andre-selosse-405
Keynote presentation: How we can optimize the interaction of micro-organisms and plants in organic systems for better nutrition (3 MB)

Session 3: Challenges of pest and disease control without conventional pesticides

Luc de Lapeyre de Bellaire is a plant pathologist and has been working on fungal diseases of bananas for 35 years in the French West Indies, Latin America, and Africa. His main research topics are dedicated to agroecological protection of Sigatoka leaf spot diseases and to postharvest diseases of bananas (anthracnose and crown rot). Deeply convinced that a better understanding of epidemiological processes is the key to design alternative strategies to chemical control, he has dedicated his carrier to a holistic understanding of these processes in banana agrosystems in order to explore pioneering pesticide-free management strategies. He is presently the head of GECO, the Research Unit of Cirad (Montpellier, France) which is dedicated to ecological functioning and sustainable management of banana and pineapple agrosystems. He is author/co-author of more than 50 publications in international scientific indexed journals.

Keynote presentation: Challenges of the management of pest and diseases in organic banana production: a holistic and realistic point of view (3.3 MB)

Session 4: Marketing organic bananas: The role of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on certification and emerging trends

Marike de Peña is a Sociologist in Agricultural Development from the Landbouw Wageningen University in the Netherlands and has devoted most of her life to bring change in favor of producers and Fairtrade. Since 1986 she has been based in the Dominican Republic, where she worked at the Dominican Land Reform Institute (IAD) training government staff on issues related to agriculture, as well as coordinating projects on organizational strengthening of small farmers. Since 2000 she has been the Managing Director of Banelino Cooperative, a successful Fair Trade banana cooperative from the Dominican Republic. Furthermore, Marike has been an active member of the Latin American and Caribbean Network of Fair Trade Small Producers and Workers (CLAC) for over 12 years, with an outstanding work around the region. Marike has played a key role in the governance of both CLAC and the Fairtrade System, as vice-president and president of their boards in the last decade.
Keynote presentation: Impact of private and public certification labels (ex. new rules for UE organic certification) with special emphasis for small producers (1.2 MB)