The second week of November, Alice Dos Santos, our intern working on mountain products, was invited by our member the Swiss Centre for Mountain Regions (SAB) to get some insights on how to successfully promote mountain products.
The first stop was in Bucharest where the SAB is implementing two projects on forestry and on mountain products co-financed by the Swiss-Romanian Cooperation Programme. The ‘De la Munte’ project aims at creating a brand identity for Mountain Products in Romania as part of the wider goal to build sustainable agriculture models in the Romanian mountain area. Started in January 2014, the SAB-project in the Romanian Carpathians takes each time more shape and the Ministry of agriculture spontaneously offered his support during the meeting in Bucharest. More information is available on the projects’ website: http://carpatsheep.ro/home-en.html. Also, Romania is currently working on the implementation of the EU optional quality term ‘mountain products’, more details on this topic will follow soon.
After the meetings in Bucharest, Alice joined the SAB team in Bern. There, she became familiar with the work of the SAB on mountain food products. As a result of the SAB work, the Swiss Federal Office of Agriculture has created two official logos for mountain food products: ‘Swiss mountain product’ for the products made in mountain areas and ‘Swiss alp product’ for the products specifically made in the alpine pastures. The SAB has been entrusted by the Swiss Federal Office of Agriculture to run a campaign to promote the new logos at national level. More information can be found on the campaign’s website: www.schweizerbergprodukte.ch.
On the last day in Bern, Alice attended a conference on how to create synergies in the mountain product value chains and how to promote mountain agriculture. The conference was organised by the SAB and the USP (Swiss Farmers’ Union). It gathered actors all along the chain (consumer associations, farmers, retailers, etc.). The main conclusion of the day was that to face the competitive economic landscape of food products, mountain products value chain should be more recognised. Therefore, all actors involved in mountain products chain should learn to better collaborate and to be able to create an added value for mountain quality products. More details can be found on the press release of the event (only available in French and German).
