Minister Leppä to attend the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture and open the International Green Week exhibition in Berlin

Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Jari Leppä will visit Berlin on 16–19 January 2019. During his visit, Minister Leppä will attend the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture and the International Green Week exhibition, where Finland is the main partner country this year. The Minister will also have bilateral meetings with many of his colleagues from around Europe.

The theme of this year’s Global Forum for Food and Agriculture, a meeting of Agriculture Ministers held annually in Berlin, is the digitalisation of agriculture. At the forum, Minister Leppä will chair a session on data protection. The programme for Minister Leppä’s visit will also include participating in a joint seminar on common agricultural policy in Europe organised by the Finnish Central Union of Agricultural Producers and Forest Owners (MTK) and the German Farmers’ Association (DBV).

As a representative of the main partner country at the International Green Week exhibition, Minister Leppä will open the exhibition together with German Minister of Agriculture Julia Klöckner and will introduce Finland’s exhibition hall at the event. The partner country project has been coordinated by the Central Union of Agricultural Producers and Forest Owners (MTK) in cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, the Central Union of Swedish-speaking Agricultural Producers in Finland (SLC) and Business Finland. More than 80 food, tourism and natural product companies from various parts of Finland will present their products and services at Finland’s hall at the exhibition to be held on 18–27 January in Berlin. Finland and Finnish foodstuffs have been highly visible to German consumers right from the start of 2019 thanks to retail campaigns in northern Germany.

- The Green Week partnership and broad retail campaigns give us the opportunity to showcase Finland’s image in a European market area that is so important for us, just before Finland takes over the Presidency of the Council of the EU. Germany is one of the main destinations for Finnish food exports, and we have developed exports systematically with our Food from Finland growth programme. We can be proud of our producer organisations and companies for their major collective effort to promote clean Finnish food and interesting natural products and services, Minister Leppä says.

The consumer campaigns in stores and online outlets are being implemented as part of Business Finland’s Food from Finland programme, which aims to make Finnish products more widely available in German retail stores and to support companies in entering the market and increasing their exports. Germany is Finland’s fifth largest foodstuff export country, with annual foodstuff exports from Finland to Germany totalling EUR 75 million.

Inquiries at the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry:
Anna-Leena Miettinen, Director of Unit, tel. +358 40 033 0812, anna-leena.miettinen(at)mmm.fi
Teppo Säkkinen, Special Adviser to the Minister, tel. +358 50 516 2868, teppo.sakkinen(at)mmm.fi

Press contacts and interview requests during the visit:
Janne Impiö, Director of Communications, tel. +358 50 330 6065