A Tale of Two Conferences

Tale of Two Conferences

In an earlier post I described the organization that Nancy volunteers with, the Societatea Ornitologica Romana. This entry I’ll talk a little about my organization. Bioterra, the Association of Organic Farmers’ of Romania, is a non-governmental (non-profit) group that encourages organic farming in Romania. It has close ties with the Agricultural University here in Cluj and both educates and promotes the cause of ecologically sound agriculture.

I do what ever I can to assist the organization. It is a small staff of Executive Director, a chief of publications and a person for finance and project development. The two person staff is assisted in auditing and technical problems by members of the Executive Director’s family. The office is located in the back of his home in the village of Luna de Sus and has most of the latest equipment, including, just recently, high speed internet.

On the 21st and 22nd of October Bioterra hosted the 7th international conference of its members, potential members, government and agriculture officials and friends here in Cluj. Seven hundred invitations went out and nearly 300 people attended. Holding a conference of this size in four different languages is a bit of a challenge for our crew, but all the necessary copying, packet stuffing, sorting, name tagging was completed with too much of a hitch.

During the conference, the task I assigned myself, was to sell the publications of the organization. Part of the education process is printing information and to date, the association has published 12 books on various aspects of organic farming. We also do a quarterly magazine in both Romanian and Hungarian. At the conference, I stood in the auditorium lobby with the books spread in front of me and I smiled and explained the cost of each book. Nancy also had her bird pins available for sale, and between the books and the pins we were kept busy.

The weekend following our conference the organization had received an invitation to attend a similar conference in Serbia. Everyone was exhausted from getting our conference completed and there was not much enthusiasm to go to Serbia so the call went up….. “We’ll send our volunteer. Tim, you’d like to go, wouldn’t you?” Nancy and I spent most of the last three days going and returning from Subotica, Serbia.

You may never have heard of Subotica, Serbia. I hadn’t. It is a town of around 100,000 people that sits just inside the boarder between Serbia and Hungary. The land around the city is flat, as it is part of the great Hungarian plain that stretches across eastern Hungary. There is nothing about the entrance to the city or the Communist era hotel that would make you think that there is any merit to the place, but once in the main center, it was astonishing to see the extravagant town hall and the buildings and commerce of the town.

The first afternoon of the conference I gave a short presentation as to the state of organic agriculture in Romania and met with many of the local and international representatives attending. The Subotica conference had fewer attendees than the Romanian one but this was only their second annual whereas ours was our seventh. What is interesting is to see how each country is trying to promote the ecological and health advantages of organic production. There is a network of connectivity and I hope that I strengthened the link between Romania and Serbia in some small way.

I’ll try and attach a couple of pictures showing, first my book table at the Cluj conference and then a scene from Subotica.