The Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality and the Wageningen University are organizing a Final Joint Seminar “Technologies and systemic changes: The way towards Sustainable Development Goal 2 in Dutch agriculture” on September 18, 2019, in The Hague. 

The implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) involves several challenges, including the need to adjust targets and indicators to local contexts, limited data availability, and complex links across objectives and scales. Since 2016, researchers from Wageningen University (NL), Rothamsted Research (UK) and IDDRI (FR) involved in the TSARA (Targets for Sustainable And Resilient Agriculture) research project have been working on facilitating this process in European countries with a focus on food security and agricultural sustainability (SDG2).

In the Netherlands, researchers from Wageningen University have partnered with the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (MinAgri) to conduct a comprehensive stakeholder consultation. As part of this process, a series of seminars have been held in The Hague, covering discussions on the targets and indicators under SDG2, what level of change should be pursued in Dutch agriculture, potential synergies and trade-offs, and the pros and cons of alternative agricultural development pathways.

The last seminar of the series is entitled “Technologies and systemic changes: The way towards Sustainable Development Goal 2 in Dutch agriculture” and will give an overview of what has been achieved in the TSARA project and promote a final round of discussion in light of the latest results. Focus will be placed on the complementary role of technologies and more systemic changes related to diets and production volumes in improving key environmental indicators for the Netherlands (i.e. nitrogen, pesticides, greenhouse gas emissions and genetic diversity). Besides assessing the contribution of different measures, we will invite participants to reflect on the levers and roadblocks related to their practical implementation.

If you would like to attend the event, please send an email to Secretariaat EIA () till September 13. Presentations will be in English. Lunch will be provided. The maximum number of participants is 50.