URGENCI’s General Assembly, January 22nd – Monterey (CA). 2013-2015 Action Plan

Goals:

It was decided by consensus that the next General Assembly will be held in China, in 2015.

Regional priorities (3) and Action Plans:

EUROPE

Priorities:

• Online tool forum to allow CSAs to share information
• Educate the people about agricultural policy in Europe
• Continue training and exchanges to enable learning about CSA

Action plan:

• Establish a “kernel” (informal coordination committee) to support goals of URGENCI Europe and share process from Milano for other regions to use (end of 2013)
• Share results from working groups
• Support of other continents organizing efforts

Help from URGENCI:

• Resources for language and translation

AFRICA

Priorities:

• Training for organic farmers
• Raising awareness of consumers about options for accessing food through non-supermarket channels
• The “Food Kiosk” system should be promoted and shared

Action plan:

• Train 10 farmers in organic agriculture / CSA in each country of Western Africa (8 countries) (by January 2015)
• 3 CSA / “Kiosk” models in each of the 8 countries (January 15)
• 2 full-time employees to coordinate support for these actions

Help from URGENCI:

• Support through contact with funders and development of materials for fundraising.
• Lobbying with national agriculture departments to give credit to the project.

ASIA

Priorities:

• Participation in/organization conferences (Bangkok in May 2013, and CSA conference in China, 2015)
• Exchanges between countries, which might be facilitated if information was made available in a common “CSA language” (translation problem, many languages)
• Education of consumers about food options and CSA

Action plan:

• Toward Organic Asia support in Thailand (May 2013), Government support for China conference (2015), and UN support and European Foundation support
• Farmer to farmer exchanges, with support from NGOs
• Sharing stories from Japanese experience and enabling exchanges between consumers from Japan to China. Providing alternative stories beside the contaminated food story, about how CSA is good for farmers. Use online videos as a tool for sharing stories

Help from URGENCI:

• Translation, coordination for conferences, distribution of technical resources.

LATIN AMERICA

Priorities

• Create an online directory for Latin America to address lack of knowledge about where there is already CSA activity
• Helping smallholders to link with consumers in appropriate ways. Spanish language resources on CSA are needed

Action Plan

• Create a CSA toolkit in Spanish (6 months)
• Mapping of organizations that are natural allies of URGENCI in Latin America. (6 months)
• 2 national assemblies (Mexico and Chile) (1 year)

Help from URGENCI:

NORTH AMERICA

Priorities

• Goal of having additional communication between regional organizations
• Coordination of a CSA gathering at existing farming conferences. It was acknowledged that there is not an existing national farming organization that could be a host or key partner for a more formal national CSA organization

Action Plan

• Coordinate CSA meetings at regional farm conferences
• Set up google group to connect existing regional CSA organizations (3 days)
• Fundraise for further development of network (June 2013)

Help from URGENCI:

• We can offer more exposure of URGENCI in the US
• We would like to continue to use and add to the stories that come from other nations participating in CSA