Program

Over the past two decades, experimental economics has become a key tool in agricultural research, offering valuable insights into decision-making by individuals, firms and institutions. This workshop brings together leading scholars to explore how controlled experiments can address critical challenges in areas such as sustainability, resource allocation, market behavior and policy evaluation within the agricultural sector.

Digital technologies offer new possibilities to advance agroecology, but they also come with challenges and limitations. This workshop shares findings from a Horizon Europe Coordination and Support Action, examining how digitalisation can enable more resilient, biodiverse, and sustainable farming systems. Participants will explore the impacts of digital tools, adoption barriers, and policy needs through expert presentations and interactive discussions. Topics include the mapping of digital technologies, assessment of co-benefits and trade-offs, and strategies for scaling agroecological practices. The workshop invites researchers, stakeholders, and policymakers to critically reflect on the future of sustainable digital agriculture.

Systematic reviews are essential for synthesizing evidence and guiding research and policy decisions. This workshop provides a comprehensive introduction to systematic review methodologies, offering participants a clear understanding of their application in this field.

A hands-on session introducing participants to the web-based City-Region Explorer Platform, combining interactive mapping with advanced data analytics of city-regions worldwide. Geospatial data that can be integrated with the city-regions dataset, are agricultural production, environmental variables, poverty maps, and other socio-economic information.

The EU Farm to Fork Strategy seeks to accelerate the shift towards a sustainable food system. By 2030, the Strategy aims to cut the overall use and risk of chemical pesticides by 50%, as well as reduce the use of more hazardous pesticides by the same percentage. Three EU Horizon-funded projects—Brightspace, GeneBEcon, and RATION—are showcasing their collaborative efforts in economic modelling to address issues related to the Farm to Fork Strategy. Their cooperation focuses on modelling regulatory alternatives for new genomic techniques (GeneBEcon), low-risk pesticides (RATION), and analyzing their market access and potential market size (Brightspace). The workshop will present the outcomes of this collaborative modelling work and discuss advanced general equilibrium modelling techniques and their applications.

Governments worldwide are making ambitious commitments to design policies for ecosystem restoration, and there are many existing initiatives. Noteworthy, the policy impact does not only depend on policy design, but importantly also on the policy context, including countries’ institutions, culture, market dynamics, and business models. This workshop brings together policymakers, researchers, restoration practitioners, and business stakeholders, to assess what we know—and need to learn—about effective ecosystem restoration. Under what conditions do policies perform best and when do they not work at all? What insights do we already have about successful policies, and what are the most urgent knowledge gaps to address?

This workshop explores socio-economic strategies and barriers for promoting underutilized crops in the European context. By examining the role of different actors—from farmers to consumers—we aim to contribute to discussions on how policy and market mechanisms can support the integration of underutilized crops into European agri-food systems. Participants will be able to exchange with experts and practitioners, share insights, and contribute to shaping recommendations that promote sustainable agri-food systems and biodiversity. This aligns with the Congress's objective to foster knowledge exchange and advance the role of agricultural economics in addressing contemporary food system challenges.