MEPs Victor Negrescu (Romania) and Franc Bogovic (Slovenia) will join SEUA17 as Ambassadors to support the startups from their countries.
Brussels, March 7. The category Agritech of SEUA17 was launched at “Smart Farming and New Technologies” event, co-hosted by MEPs Victor Negrescu and Franc Bogovic, which took place yesterday at the European Parliament.
“We have a big challenge to solve in Europe regarding a more productive and sustainable agricultural production. That is the reason why we include Agritech as new category for SEUA to identify startups that are working on smart farming, agribusiness and other solutions”, expressed Juan Manuel Revuelta, StartUp Europe Accelerator (by Finnova) CEO, during his presentation at the event.
This conference was an excellent opportunity to learn more about the future of agriculture from experts working in the field and award-winning entrepreneurs, as MEP Paolo De Castro, Vice-Chair Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development; MEP Nicola Caputo, Member Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development; Ana Cuadrado Galvan, Research Programme Officer, DG Agriculture and Rural Development; Ștefan și Mihai Stănescu, Co-Founders Agriso, a startup that developed an APP capable of monitoring in real time farm exploitations; Cezar Nourescu, Co-Founder, CBN IT winner of the Best New Startup 2016 ANIS Prize, and Lenard Koschwitz, Director EU Affairs Allied for Startups.
In his presentation, Juan Manuel Revuelta pointed out that “”European Union funds are available for innovation in agriculture and farming, such as the SMEs Instrument and LIFE. Entrepreneurs and startups could access from € 50,000 to € 2 million euros and collaborate with public institutions to validate their projects”.
Revuelta also presented StartUp Europe Awards, an initiative promoted by European Commission and implemented by Finnova, as a methodology for open innovation, in the case of Agritech category, for agriculture and livestock farming solutions. “We have expressed to the European Parliament our interest, with the support of Commission, to have the European Final of StartUp Europe Awards at European Parliament premises, because policies and legislation for innovation need to be nurtured by the experience of entrepreneurs and startups. We need to collaborate and work together”.
Revuelta also introduced in his speech best practices of the StartUp Europe Accelerator program by Finnova: Abonova, Drone Hopper, TubEnergy, Azahar biostabilization and LIFE projects as LIFE Ecoglauca. About this last project Juan Manuel expressed: “the innovation responds to challenges such as the burning of agricultural waste generated each year more than 90,000 tons burnt and could transform into energy”.
“One of the most important challenges that Europa is facing nowadays is rural depopulation, and we need to find innovative solutions to this” Revuelta concluded.