APIMED is taking the first steps toward the creation of the Observatory of Mediterranean Beekeeping.

Over the last decades, the global challenges that food producers and their products have faced make it ever more important to press the competitive advantages of Mediterranean products as they relate to market value.

Since its foundation in 2011, APIMED (Federation of Mediterranean Beekeepers) has foreseen this opportunity for Mediterranean beekeepers and their neighbors. The mission of the Federation has been focused since the beginning on the interests of Mediterranean beekeepers and the characteristics they share while acknowledging differences in rules, traditions and levels of development.

Investigating and taking advantage of the rich variety of the members has long been an object of discussion within the Federation. In 2014, APIMED contributed to the founding of the project “Mediterranean CooBEEration - a network for beekeeping, food security and biodiversity”, gaining the tools to start their investigation and, among other activities, creating an Observatory on Mediterranean Beekeeping. The Observatory’s collection of data will enable Federation members to reach a better understanding of the beekeeping sector, while honoring the different qualitative and quantitative levels of different member countries.

The Observatory’s efforts will be related to geographical areas not single countries, which already have their own national observatories. The initial objective of this data collection will be to align the beekeepers of member countries with two common Federation values: ensuring that the methods of production enhance the value of local products that are natural and traditional; and encouraging the common development of technical, scientific, cultural and professional tools that will protect the quality of Mediterranean products against competition from types of productions that follow different rules and traditions.

The construction of a descriptive framework is a prerequisite for the proposal of common actions, and these days the federation is taking the first steps in this direction. The first tool used for gathering the data of the Observatory will be a questionnaire, translated into four different languages (French, English, Arabic and Italian), that directly involves beekeepers, organizations or institutions of intermediate level, universities and technicians related to beekeeping and researchers from all member countries. The answers and their processing will provide the first contribution to the creation of a framework of data for future activities.

The Observatory, by promoting and supporting beekeeping and beekeepers, will also have a wide role supporting biodiversity, which enhances the quality of food on our planet. In the last decades, intensive agriculture at a global level has led to to an increasing use of pesticides, reduction of genetic variety of cultivated species and the degradation of natural habitats, all of which are destructive to pollinators. But many types of fruits, legumes, vegetables and crops depend on pollination. Bees are the predominant, most economically important pollinators in many areas. Pollination - and the support of bees that perform it – is, therefore, vital to maintaining ecosystems and their biodiversity and to safeguarding the entire world’s food production.

Finally, the Observatory will provide useful information for the better definition of the target and the campaign “CooBEEration, ” which will begin in autumn, and which will promote the principles of the project “Mediterranean CooBEEration”.

The foundation of the Observatory of Mediterranean Beekeeping is listed within the activities of the project “Mediterranean CooBEEration”, financed by the European Union and which  partners are, together with APIMED, FELCOS Umbria (Fund of Local Authorities for Decentralized Cooperation and Human Sustainable Development), leader of the action, UNDP (United Nations Development Program), DIPSA (Department of Agro-environmental Sciences and Technologies of University of Bologna), DISAFA (Department of Agricultural, Forest and Food Science of University of Turin) and INAT (National Agronomic Institute of Tunisia).

“Mediterranean CooBEEration” project aims at supporting beekeeping and its strategic role in the preservation of biodiversity and the improvement of food security and socio-economic development in the entire Mediterranean area.

In particular, UNDP has, during this years, sustained APIMED and FELCOS UMBRIA in supporting beekeeping through cooperation activities. Now, with its wide network of contacts and institutional partners in the Mediterranean area and at the international level, UNDP will contribute to the rootedness and sustainability of the Observatory even after the end of the project “Mediterranean CooBEEration”.

 SOURCE: www.fedapimed.org

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