The President of the Generalitat de Catalunya, Pere Aragonès i Garcia, this morning vindicated the “decisive role” of the agri-food sector in the country’s economy. “If today Catalonia is a transformative, prosperous country with a good quality of life, it is essentially thanks to the potential and dynamism of its economy, especially our agri-food sector.” A fact, he remarked, that “must awaken all the pride of the sector” and “our self-esteem.”

During the opening in Barcelona of the 1st International Agri-Food Summit, the head of the Catalan Government pointed out that we are talking about a “leading productive sector in Catalonia,” which represents “the first agri-food cluster in Europe” and which has established itself as one of the “main drivers of the Catalan economy.”

In relation to the challenges ahead for the sector, the President insisted that this progress should be associated with the “preservation of the territory and the environment” and with “making transformations, opportunities and well-being reach everywhere and everyone. It should speak in terms of circular bioeconomy, of proximity and roots in the territory, of justice and equity, of people’s health and well-being,” stressed the President, as set out in the Strategic Food Plan for Catalonia.

Aragonès highlighted the opportunity for the summit hosted by Barcelona to “boost the agri-food sector” and to do so with a “desire to think big and join forces for a shared future” in which the sector contributes “decisively” to “generating more opportunities and more well-being for all.”