• Two days of presentations and two parallel activities comprise a programme dedicated to applying new technologies and innovation in a primary sector moving towards sustainability
• The event, which will be held this Wednesday and Thursday at Infecar, already has more than 500 registered participants

The ‘ExpoAgro Canarias 2023 Innovation Meetings’ will be held this Wednesday and Thursday, 13 and 14 December, at Infecar, where experts and professionals from the primary sector will discuss the challenges currently facing agriculture and livestock farming and the most innovative solutions to meet them.

Promoted and financed by the Cabildo de Gran Canaria, with the collaboration of the Department of the Primary Sector and organised by Infecar, this event will bring together experts, farmers, livestock farmers, suppliers and companies to jointly study how to apply new technologies and the most innovative methods in agriculture and livestock farming.

ExpoAgro Canarias has become a technical conference that will be attended this week by leading companies that, at the moment, are setting the pace in terms of the application of new technologies in the sector, all this together with renewable energies and sustainability and with projection to the rural world, where it is much more difficult for this type of information and resources to reach”, explained the Minister for the Primary Sector, Food Sovereignty and Water Security of the Cabildo, Miguel Hidalgo, on Monday during the presentation of the event. The councillor explained that this will be the third edition of ExpoAgro Canarias, after those held in 2019 and 2022; however, this year, ExpoAgro Canarias is reformulating its proposal to become a technical conference of an informative nature because what the island’s primary sector demands is “training, knowledge, tools and resources”.

The two days of ExpoAgro Canarias 2023, which will be moderated by the island’s director of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Alejandro Báez will kick off on Wednesday with three talks on the application of new technologies in pest control; the director of Ecobertura, Fernando Pinacho, will talk about how to monitor pests and the latest intelligent traps; the professor of the University of Seville and co-founder of the precision agriculture specialists @agrosaptrimble, Manuel Pérez, will talk about the application of Artificial Intelligence for crop protection; and the technical director of Agrotecnologías Canarias, José Antonio Haorun, on how to control pests using drones.

In the second block of the first day of the event, experts will discuss the transition of agriculture to a more sustainable model, led by the CEO and co-founder of Enkitek, Víctor Canton; the restoration of agricultural spaces, by the technical director of Ecuórum, Francisco Rodríguez; and the situation of agrivoltaics in Gran Canaria, with Consuelo Tatiana Gómez from the Insular Council of Energy of Gran Canaria.

The program will continue this Thursday, December 14, with two more blocks of knowledge; the first is dedicated to finding value in by-products derived from agriculture and livestock, and the second is regenerative agriculture. In the first, the manager of Solmediat, Guillermo Rubío, the doctor and researcher of the Aquaculture Research Group (GIA), Lidia Robaina, the researcher of the water and waste group of the Technological Center CEIT, Tamara Fernández, and the CEO of Bioflytech, Jesús Fernando Rodríguez, will give talks about waste treatment, by-products generated in farms, and insect production. The block dedicated to regenerative agriculture will gather at Infecar the founder and CEO of The Regen Academy Francesc Font, the livestock farmer and promoter of Granja Zael in Burgos, Andrés Gómez, and the researcher of the Canary Institute of Agricultural Research (ICIA), Federico Laich; these last speakers will share their knowledge on regenerative agriculture and livestock, but also on the importance of soil in maintaining its biodiversity and the quality of crops and farms.

Parallel Activities

The two days of ExpoAgro Canarias 2023 are complemented by two parallel activities: a technical conference focusing on the effectiveness of new treatments for controlling diocalandra in Palmae and the ‘EIT Food: Feeding the Future’ event. The first will be held on the morning of this Thursday, December 14. It will feature participation from ICIA researchers Estrella Hernández and Carina Ramos, the Head of the Plant Health Section of the General Directorate of Agriculture, José Ángel Reyes, the technical engineer from SPS Iberia Sales Lead Syngenta Pablo Sánchez, and the tree and palm technician Jaume Alagarda. On the other hand, ‘EIT Food’ will split its program into two days, this Wednesday and Thursday, where participants, guided by experts, can acquire knowledge and establish connections for the launch of startups that align with EIT Food values, Europe’s leading food innovation initiative aimed at transforming the food system into a sustainable one.

Tickets to ExpoAgro Canarias 2023 can be free after registering at www.expoagrocanarias.es, where the registration forms for the two parallel activities and the entire program are also available.

‘ExpoAgro Canarias: Innovation Meetings’ is an event promoted and financed by the Cabildo de Gran Canaria and organised by Infecar, with the collaboration of the Ministry of Primary Sector, Food Sovereignty, and Water Security of the Cabildo de Gran Canaria, the Economic Development Agency of Gran Canaria, the Chamber of Commerce of Gran Canaria, COAG-Canarias, and Cajasiete.