Partnership in agriculture between Bavaria and Voronezh is honoured with award

To mark the end of the Russian-German Cross Year of Regional and Municipal Partnerships the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin hosted on 14 September
an award ceremony to honour outstanding collaborative projects between the two countries’ regions. Among the winners was the project between the Free State of Bavaria and Voronezh Region.

Anton Huebl (Head of Department of the Bavarian Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Forestry), Evgenii Iurchenko (Vice Governor of the Voronezh Region) and Olga Ohly (Coordinator of the German-Russian Agricultural and Political Dialogue project and representative of Ekosem Agrarprojekte GmbH) received awards from Foreign Minis-ters of Germany and Russia – Heiko Maas and Sergey Lavrov.

To work together towards sustainable and progressive agricultural policy and rural development is one of the fundamental principles of the partnership between the Free State of Bavaria and Voronezh Region.

The meeting that initially was supposed to be multidisciplinary, quickly shifted focus on to agriculture – much so due to the involvement of Bavarian Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Forestry, Stefan Dürr, managing director of Ekosem-Agrar AG and the most famous foreign investor in the agricultural sector in Russia, as well as the Federal Ministry for Food and Agriculture.

The partnership in the agricultural sector between the Free State of Bavaria and Voronezh Region, supported through the bilateral German-Russian Agricultural and Political Dialogue, has counted multiple encounters and jointly organised events since its start in 2010. In 2017 the partnership was institutionalised and strengthened through a memorandum of understanding on the governmental level.

Due to its considerable experience in international economic cooperation, now the partnership between Bavaria and Voronezh serves as as an example for further collaborative projects in agriculture between German and Russian regions.

You will find more about the Russian-German Cross Year of Regional and Municipal Part-nerships, as well as the partnership between Bavaria and Voronezh in agriculture, here.

Images: German-Russian Forum (Award ceremony)