Berytech is proud to announce that its deputy GM Ramy Boujawdeh received the Impact Maker of the Year Award 2019 on behalf of Lebanon during the fourth Global Agripreneurs Summit, which took place on September 7-11 in Greece.
The award is the first of its kind and is given to the country that works hard in promoting agripreneurship and building an ecosystem that centers on agricultural innovations. Ramy and his team had served their country well when they came up with the idea for the Agrytech program, which included an accelerator for agri-food innovations. They managed to secure funding from the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands for two consecutive years. Led by the belief in the potential of innovation in agriculture combined with Berytech’s expertise in entrepreneurship, Ramy and his team started the agri-food revolution in Lebanon and are now its true spokespeople.
“It was a big surprise for me as I didn’t even know we were nominated! I feel very proud of the efforts done by my team to raise the name of Lebanon high and to receive global acknowledgement for the efforts we’re doing for the global ecosystem,” Ramy said. “This will give us more motivation to work harder and faster and take entrepreneurship work within the agri-food innovation sphere to a whole new level.”
“We know that in Lebanon we have the talent, we have the education and we have the opportunity to really bridge between the East and West to be able to identify global problems and find solutions for them,” he added.
Defining the Future Farmer 4.0
The Global Agripreneurs Summit is an assembly of agri-food innovators and leaders from around the world where farmers, agripreneurs, chefs, investors, organizations, policy makers, and other thought leaders work together to help bring life to game changing innovations, and propel agriculture as a sustainable source of growth and economic development.
This year, the 4th summit centered its theme as “Defining the Future Farmer 4.0”. Envisioning how technology will transform the farmer, food, and nutrition.
The Summit, which comes as the crowning of the Future Agro Challenge (FAC), was a great chance to hear all about the latest innovations in food and agriculture and identify viable solutions for the food supply chain challenges. As for the FAC, it highlighted groundbreaking initiatives addressing national, regional, and global challenges across the food supply chain.
This year, Marc Aoun, co-founder of Compost Baladi, was invited to represent Lebanon having won the local “Lebanese Agripreneur of the year” organized by Berytech. Marc competed against 37 startups from around the world, presenting his social enterprise specialized in providing waste management products and services for municipalities, commercial establishments, households, restaurants, and academic institutions.
Panels
A number of panels took place during this five-day event, with Ramy Boujawdeh moderating two panels, one title “Asia: Could the rural economy reinvent new opportunities?” and another titled “Latin America: Rural wealth, agripreneurship, and conflict.” Through the panels, the attendees learned more about untapped practical innovative solutions, and promising case studies, as well as data points to keep in mind.
