BIO Austria visit to Armenia

The local trips were organised and guided by Moritz Lenglachner, OeAD lector in Yerevan and editor of the student newspaper "Alpen-Kaukasus-Kurier" in cooperation with Astghik Sahakyan from International Center for Agribusiness Research and Education (ICARE) Foundation and Emma Petrosyan from Organic Armenia Association. The first official meeting with a number of representatives from the Armenian organic sector took place at ICARE Foundation. It provided a general overview of the organic sector in Armenia, projects implemented with the support from Austrian Development Agency (ADA) and the project Building Organic Agriculture in Armenia | BOAA. BOAA team member Sasun Mamajanyan presented the project progress, successful collaboration with the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU), and how the opportunity of experiencing the organic sector in Austria through farm visits and the visit to BIO Austria helped the teaching team to get a fuller picture of organic agriculture and the organic movement in general. This was later on incorporated into the curriculum of the Armenian Organic Masters Program (OMP) at Armenian National Agricultural University. Over the next few days, the group of Austrian farmers not only visited several organic farms that were supported through ADA, but also explored sightseeing places in Armenia and the Austrian Library in Yerevan.