Nov 17, 2013
More than 100 guests turned out to support the launch of APAR, the newly-formed Romanian agricultural journalists’ association, at a reception in Bucharest on October 31.
The Romanian minister for agriculture, Daniel Constantin, was amongst the guests, alongside other government officials, Romanian agricultural associations and representatives of the country’s media.
From left to right: LIVIU GORDEA – vicepresident for Transylvania Region, PETRONELA COTEA-MIHAI – vicepresident for Moldavian Region, NICOLETA DRAGOMIR – president of APAR, COSMIN ANDREI – vicepresident Muntenia Region, DANIEL CONSTANTIN – Romanian Minister of Agriculture, ADRIAN RADULESCU – counsellor in presidential comission for agriculture, SERGIU SORIN CHELMU – general subsecretary in Minister of Agriculture
“APAR was established only in August this year,” says Nicoleta Dragomi, the association’s president [see news story here]. “We decided to organise our first major event on October 31st, a conference about Romanian Agricultural Journalism and how it reflects the problems and the achievements of agriculture, and to use it as the launch event as well.
“Our guests and speakers are the leaders of the main professional associations in agriculture, companies, officials delegates from governmental institutions and journalists. And of course, we also had our APAR members in attendance too.
“This first event was a great success – even better than we imagined it should be! Becoming a member of the ENAJ organisation was one of our main goals, which has motivated us to go further and prove to everybody that we really do something – working not just talking.”
Jef Verhaeren, chairman of ENAJ, could not be present at the launch event, but sent this message to ARPA, which Nicoleta read out during the launch:
I want to give this message to the Romanian agricultural journalists: I don’t want to tell you about the importance of agricultural journalism. It’s very obvious. But because agriculture and food production is important all over the world and it is a global responsibility, we have to work together. We can learn a lot of each other. That’s why the associations of agricultural journalist exist all over the world since a long time. Farming and food production is a global issue and so is thus agricultural journalism. Europe was on the basis of organisation of agricultural journalists at an international organisation and founded IFAJ more than 50 years ago. In 2011 ENAJ (European Network of Agricultural Journalists )was founded to promote networking between European journalists around CAP and other agricultural problems. ENAJ is based on European national association of agricultural journalists. Since Romania has an national association we have guilds in 18 of the 28 member states. We work further on this but in the meantime I hope the Romanian association APAR work in solidarity for agricultural journalism. With helping each other with respect for each others particularity and culture we learn a lot and can help each other by networking to better inform European farmers and the public about the importance of agriculture in Europe. I wish APAR much success and hope to meet you soon!