IAAS ETHZ | ICYA Netherlands 2023 (2024)

International Conference of Youth in Agriculture January 2023 Wageningen

For one week, seven Swiss IAAS members (one of them even in the organizing team) could attend one of this year’s International Conferences for Youth in Agriculture. We spent most of our time at Wageningen University and Research, one of the most important universities in the agricultural and food sciences field. Together with young people from all over the world, we learned more about the topic “Rethink Waste: Towards a circular economy”.

On Tuesday morning, the 17^th of January the delegations of the different national committees arrived at the University of Wageningen, in the very impressive building called “Forum”. As three of the Swiss delegation had taken the night train from Basel and had arrived very early, they had the chance to explore the campus before everybody had arrived and visited the different beautiful buildings. As soon as the other participants arrived we ate together in a different building. The lunch was, like every warm meal this week, vegan and very tasty. We met afterward back in the “Forum” for a soft skills training, during which we had the chance to learn more about leadership skills and about strategic planning. The program of Tuesday evening was several presentations of more or less local entrepreneurs who build their companies on the idea of a circular economy. The ideas of the entrepreneurs were quite different but all based on the concept of reusing already available resources. After the presentations, questions, and discussions, we had the chance to interact with all participants at the networking night with a beer. Later, we were brought to our accommodation: Tiny houses on a camping site around 30 minutes from the campus.

The next day started with the opening ceremony, including speeches from the organizing committee, two UN youth ambassadors of the Netherlands, representatives of the university of Wageningen, and more. It was very fascinating to listen to people from very different ages and positions on how they see current problems and (future) solutions regarding the agricultural field. After lunch, we had many exciting presentations, conferences, and workshops. For example, there was a presentation about the principles of circular biobased economy and Rabobank: carbon farming. In addition, the representatives from IAAS Croatia talked about their experiences on a regenerative farm. Before dinner, we also had the chance to visit the soil museum on campus, which was a quite unique experience. In the evening we watched the documentary “Kiss the ground”. While watching it we should keep the question of “Is regenerative agriculture circular?” in mind and debate about it after the documentary has finished.

After breakfast, which we (like every morning) ate in our accommodation, we had a workshop with Ph.D. students at Wageningen University, who talked about “Exploring circular food systems: Feed the world, respect the planet”. This was a very inspiring conference, as not only were the participants where from all around the world, but also the three Ph.D. students represented three different continents and could share their views and research approaches with us. As Thursday was our excursion day, we took a bus to Rotterdam. During our trip, Mr. President of IAAS World explained to us what we could see from out of the window. First, we visited all together the Floating Farm, a small dairy farm on some kind of fixed boat which floating. The cows living on this farm ship symbolized long-term research on how to bring food closer to people in big cities built close to water. We also had the chance to enter the Floating Farm and consume some of the products they sell there. Then, we visited the BlueCity, an old and huge indoor swimming pool, now used as a place for Startup’s working on concepts in the field of the circular economy. One of the highlights of this day may also have been the visit to the city of Rotterdam itself. During sunset, the harbor was beautiful to look at. After taking the bus back to Wageningen and eating in a student house, we went into the city of Wageningen and attended a party with many local students.

On our last official morning, some of the participants presented their own projects and we had the opportunity to ask them questions and get inspired. Following was a lecture about circular water system management, which is quite unique in the Netherlands. In the afternoon we had a workshop in small groups on finding solutions for food waste. Our ideas should help the people from FAYI (Food and Agriculture Youth Institute) write their position papers about this topic. As our last workshop in this week, we again met the Dutch youth UN representatives. With them, we discussed questions that we had and to which we wanted to hear ideas or opinions from the other participants. This was highly interesting, as systems in our countries and on our continents work quite differently. In the evening we ate dinner at the accommodation restaurant and had our Development Fund night at the same place. It was such a fun evening and we collected quite a lot of money for the Development Fund.

Saturday which mean departure day had come and some of us, before our trains or planes brought us back to our home or study countries, enjoyed the rest of the day in Utrecht or Amsterdam. It was an inspiring week and we are grateful to have had the opportunity to meet all those amazing people.

Go further, go IAAS!

January 2023

~ Ladina Gähler