YPARD representation at the EFARD management team

In a bid to ensure a diverse representation of young people in various executive meetings and committees YPARD has nominated Kristina Kuznetsova as the new YPARD Representative in the European Forum on Agricultural Research for Development (EFARD) management team.

What is the European Forum on Agricultural Research for Development (EFARD)?

EFARD is an umbrella network of European research and non- research stakeholders from the public and private European organisations and the European Commission. It aims to strengthen her contribution in poverty alleviation, food security, and sustainable development in developing countries by providing a platform for strategic dialogue among European stakeholders in order to promote research partnerships between European and Southern research communities. EFARD follows the principles of the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) and contributes to GFAR’s Global Plan of Action, in partnership with the other GFAR regional fora.

The EFARD management team is made up of 5-6 persons; the Chair, Vice-Chair and Executive Secretary and 2-3 other members representing a broad range of stakeholder groups and national fora of member countries. Aligning with the same mission, YPARD has been represented in the EFARD management team for several years. The first YPARD representative was André Stucki a member of YPARD Switzerland and later Rahel Wyss, YPARD Switzerland country representative. And now we are delighted in having Kristina, YPARD Ukraine country representative carry on with YPARD’s work with EFARD.

More about Kristina and her role in the EFARD management team

Kristina is a young agricultural entrepreneur and consultant who has been working in the agricultural field for 8 years. She holds a Master’s degree in International Horticulture and has graduated with honors from the University of Bologna, Italy. She has been with YPARD as the Ukraine country representative for the past 5 years. Currently, she is an M&E team lead working at MEDA as Monitoring, Evaluation and Marketing Manager in the Ukrainian Horticulture Business Development Project, which is supported by the Government of Canada and implemented by MEDA. The project aims to increase revenues of 44000 fruit and vegetable smallholder producers in the south of Ukraine and connect them to markets.

Think Kristina is great? Well, in addition to all that is mentioned above she is also the co-founder of an open data knowledge platform greenval.org that allows Ukrainian farmers to select the most appropriate fertilizers, pesticides and production schemes. The platform was awarded 500 000 UAH at Ukrainian Open Data Competition. Prior to these activities, she has also been a Managing Director of Datalab Agro Ukraine, a Swiss company that developed and implemented farm management systems. Kristina is an Alumni of the World food systems Center (WFSC) and Norwegian-Ukrainian Young Entrepreneurs (NUCC YE) Program. Kristina’s professional interests are in bringing research and innovations to the field and farmers, projects related to AgTech, product development, and marketing.

Within the EFARD management team, Kristina will represent YPARD’s mission and vision at all of EFARD´s meetings. Within this role, she hopes to contribute to the strategic vision and EFARD network development, support strategic engagement among European stakeholders especially young researchers, to enable access to resources and opportunities for young researchers, support projects related to knowledge sharing of open data that influence SDGs, build multistakeholder partnerships, especially among and with educational and research institutions, and also, share key news, resources, exchange of ideas in multiple directions and dimensions with members and partners.

Looking forward to learning more from Kristina’s interaction with the EFARD management team.

Picture credit: Kristina Kuznetsova