Women in agribusiness to meet at Barcelona event
An event to help promote and advance women in the agricultural industry will take place in Barcelona next week, following the conference's success in the U.S. over recent years. 
Women in Agribusiness Summit Europe will take place in the Spanish city from Feb. 10-12 and is largely aimed at increasing women's knowledge of the complex industry, while also boosting their professional and personal skills.
During this day-and-a-half conference there will be various speeches from people including leadership and diversity expert Michèle Mees and FoodDrinkEurope director general Mella Frewan, whose presentation will revolve around the latest consumer food trends.
A representative of the company organizing the event, HighQuest Group, told www.freshfruitportal.com a noticeable lack of women in previous other events and a low representation of women generally in the industry had brought about the idea to hold a Women in Agribusiness Summit.
"It is our perspective that the best way for women to advance is for them to be the best candidate," event director Joy O'Shaughnessy said.
"In order to do that you need to know what's going on in your function area, you need to go what's going on in your industry, you need to know what's going on in adjacent industries that affect your company, and you need to develop your personal business skills.
"So we created this event to hit on all of those things so that we are giving women tools to help themselves advance."
The Women in Agribusiness Summit has quickly grown in popularity in the U.S., where HighQuest Group now gathers more than 450 people annually to discuss topics such as industry forecasts, outlooks, best practices, and personal skill development.
O'Shaughnessy explained the idea to hold another annual event in Europe came from the U.S. event's multinational sponsors looking to have their European divisions benefit from the same type of community building.
"With their encouragement, we've taken that event and now we'll be focusing on European issues," she said.
"That is a little trickier, because there are so many nations with different cultural acceptance of women, and so we really wanted to make sure we catered this not only to the specific gender issues in Europe but also the specific industry issues in Europe - things like doing business across borders or European trade regulations.
"So we're making sure we tailor it to this audience so it's helpful and valuable to them."
HighQuest Group is also holding another event, The Oilseed Congress Europe, Middle East & North Africa (MENA), at the same location in Barcelona from Feb. 9-10, which will address key opportunities and challenges facing the oilseed trade within these regions.
For more information visit www.womeninageurope.com and www.oilseedcongress.com. In order to benefit from a 15% discount, include the following code: CVA15 when registering.
