SalFar gets Political Attention
Every year the Trilateral Governmental Conference is held in connection with the Wadden Sea Conference, which took place from 17-18 May in Leeuwarden, this year’s European Capital of Culture. The Conferences are a forum for stakeholders from the whole Wadden Sea Region aimed to inform about policy-making and the cooperation.
This year the Ministers of the three Wadden Sea countries, Carola Schouten (NL), Svenja Schulze (D) and Jakob Ellemann-Jensen (DK) met to agree on the future plans for the UNESCO World Heritage site Wadden Sea and to sign the "Declaration of Leeuwarden”. Shortly, after the declaration was signed, two members of the SalFar team from the Northern Netherlands, succeeded in handing over some saline products, in a spontaneous action outside the protocol. The Ministers were delighted to see i.e. potatoes, samphire, ice-plant, and sea kale mustard. The Danish Minister, Jakob Ellemann-Jensen, immediately opened one package of ice-plant, and offered it to his two colleagues. The German Minister, Svenja Schulze, was amazed to see saline potatoes, and the Dutch Minister, Carola Schouten, assured to support SalFar.
Apart from getting attention from the Ministers, the SalFar team also succeeded in getting attention to the project at their stand during the “World Class Wadden Sea Conference” on 17 May, where saline farming was a very important issue. Here they had numerous discussions with visitors on the project market and promoted saline food by giving away small boxes of potatoes grown on saline ground.
Altogether, the Northern Netherlands Salfar team could conclude that they had two great days in Leeuwarden and achieved a lot of attention to the SalFar project.
