Sustainability in the vegetable sector

This follow-up programme concerns an information campaign aiming at increasing the awareness of the sustainability efforts of vegetable sector. With vegetables key European Union agricultural products, the vegetable sector is a fundamental sector for many EU Member States. We notice an increasing importance of a sustainable lifestyle and diet. This is very clear in the European Green Deal’s ambition, i.e. to transform the EU into a fair and prosperous society, with a modern, resource efficient and competitive economy which takes into account societal concerns on sustainability issues. However, we noticed that knowledge on the sustainability efforts of the European vegetable sector is limited. The programme will target consumers 35+ (B2C) in Belgium and food professionals (B2B) in Germany. Through a PR-approach we will highlight the sustainability of the vegetable sector and stress its beneficial role for climate action and the environment, in a straightforward, honest and trustworthy way. The activities will address how vegetables and their production methods contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation and how they help to reach the objectives of the European Green Deal in general. We would like to increase awareness around the sustainability of European and Belgian vegetables among a B2C and B2B target group by intensively communicating about these characteristics. Our communication will be based on scientific data and experiences and testimonials
from the sector. When evaluating this campaign we would like a positive shift at the end of the campaign for the campaign message. Although an economic impact is not the objective of the programme, we hope to see a positive effect of the programme on the sales and export figures of vegetables.