With the signature of a contract on 22nd Sept 2009 in Jihlava, all founding members declared their common aim to build and ensure the development of  organic farming and organic food production with emphasis on knowledge transfer across all key areas of the sector.

By signing this contract, all members have bound themselves to support initiatives focused on strengthening competitiveness of organic agriculture and the development of production, distribution, sales and consumption of organic food, to be active in the related areas of scientific research, technology and innovation and to support and actively participate in the creation and implementation of strategic documents.

The platform was founded in accordance with the initiative of TP Organics and the initiative of the European Commission of 16th June 2004 on the establishment of technology platforms.The Czech Technology Platform CTPOA makes a commitment to be active throughout the Czech Republic and, at the same time, to closely cooperate with other technology platforms established within the EU and other countries.

Due to a lack of integration between the research sector and the users of its results, it is not possible to achieve an exchange of information, development of innovative technologies and the transfer of practical needs to research, while these are the core of successful development of organic agriculture.

Consequently, despite OA development in the Czech Republic following the latest European trends and organic agricultural land is ten percent of total agricultural land.

The representational composition of the Platform guarantees cooperation across the whole sector which should contribute to solving problems.

CTPOA incorporates research institutes, universities, business representatives – both primary producers and processors of organic produce. The founding members collectively drew up a Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) and Implementation Action Plan (IAP).

• The SRA is the main working document of the Platform, identifying priorities for long-term research and innovation.
• The IAP defines medium-term and long-term aims for progressive work on the identified priorities within individual research topics according to their importance and with regard to weaknesses of Czech organic agriculture and insufficient knowledge. The IAP defines activities and steps necessary to fulfil priorities, including implementation and planned outputs.

Membership of the Platform is open. Membership can be applied for in writing, addressed to the chairman of the steering committee, via the CTPOF coordinator - the Bioinstitut.

More information

Links

• Bioinstitut.cz: CTPOA - Czech Technology Platform for Organic Agriculture
• Bioinstitut.cz: Homepage of the Bioinstitut

Contact

• Pavlína Samsonová, CTPOA, c/o Bioinstitut