For yet another year, students from public and subsidized schools in the province of the entire Valencian Community will receive training on organic farming, healthy eating and respect for the environment in the fifth edition of the school workshops organized by the Ecological Agriculture Committee of the Valencian Community (CAECV).
This type of educational activity, aimed at students between 9 and 11 years old, begins next Monday, March 15, in the Valencian town of Sueca and, over the next few months, it will go through, virtually, around a hundred of schools in Castelló, València and Alicante.
The school workshops, which have the support of the Department of Agriculture, Rural Development, Climate Emergency and Ecological Transition, and the Alicante Provincial Council, have the participation of professionals who explain, in a very simple and didactic way, what it is and how organic food is produced, giving general food and nutrition guidelines and teaching how to read the labeling of the products, how to know if they are organic or not, and all the nutritional information of interest that can help students to know which foods they are healthier and suitable for consumption.
Online format and huge expectation from the education sector
Due to the situation caused by COVID-19, school workshops have had to adapt to the situation, with the aim of complying with all health measures, but without renouncing the need to emphasize promoting the need from the school environment of carrying out a balanced diet and the importance of consuming organic food.
For the president of CAECV, José Antonio Rico, “the pandemic situation we are going through has caused us to have to reinvent ourselves and offer schools the possibility of organizing these workshops online because we are aware of the importance of a education a healthy diet ”.
In this sense, the proposal to give these school workshops in virtual format has had an excellent reception by educational centers and the CAECV has the possibility of reaching more students. “Educating children from an early age is essential because in the future they will be the ones who decide what products they are going to consume, so training them in the importance of a good choice is a key issue that will not only benefit them, but to the agri-food producers and the organic sector in general, ”explained Rico.
The consumption of organic products in Spain has grown by 16,4% in the last year and more than 96% since 2012, although our country is still far from the per capita consumption of organic food. “Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden or Germany, with values that multiply the consumption of our country by up to six, are far ahead and, with this type of activities, we try to promote, publicize and incentivize the multiple advantages of organic production ”, affirms the president of CAECV.
