Agricultural journalists are actors in the ecosystem of agricultural innovation communication and therefore important for EU-FarmBook.

EU-FarmBook supports the activities of the European Network of Agricultural Journalists (ENAJ), because journalists play an important role in the most relevant target groups of EU-FarmBook, such as farmers, advisors and decision makers. ENAJ is the umbrella organization of the national guilds of 20 EU member states and two EFTA countries. The main activities of ENAJ is to organize workshops and press trips for their members. From July 6-8, ENAJ and the German Guild of Agricultural Journalists VDAJ invited a group of 19 agricultural journalists from 12 countries to the Palatinate, a region of wine and vegetable production in Western Germany. They visited a research institute, wineries and farms to learn about innovations for sustainable farming.

Wine makers and vegetable growers in the Palatinate have to deal with a lot of challenges: They are facing droughts because of climate change, their production is affected by pests, they need to reduce plant protection to fulfill EU legislation and they have to compete in global markets. Innovations are needed to produce in a sustainable way and to be successful. In viticulture new cultivars – so called PIWIS – are innovative, because they can help to reduce plant protection.