NJF Nordic-Baltic workshop: Towards a viable, competitive and resilient agri-food sector

16 September 2025, Seinäjoki, Finland

Europe is experiencing turbulent times. Agri-food sector and rural areas have a key role in ensuring a well-functioning society and in securing that everyone has access to high-quality affordable food, fiber and energy.

Economic competitiveness, resilience and crisis preparedness play a pivotal role in ensuring viable, well-functioning Nordic-Baltic agriculture and food system. Agriculture and rural areas in the Nordic and Baltic countries share similar challenges stemming from natural and market conditions.

To resolve these challenges, technical, biological, economic and social innovations are urgently needed.

NJF is organizing a one-day workshop that focuses on the economic viability, resilience and crisis preparedness of Nordic-Baltic agri-food sector in turbulent times. The workshop is targeted to researchers and experts of companies and stakeholder organizations. The workshop will offer a possibility to meet and discuss about the viability, resilience and crisis-preparedness of agri-food system from the Nordic-Baltic perspective.

The NJF workshop will take place in Seinäjoki, Finland, in the day before the Seinäjoki Food days (17-18 September). The Food days is free-of-charge event that brings together food chain innovators to the best place for food business, to discuss how to sustainably grow in the food sector. The program of the Food days is already available here. Please note that the participants of must register separately to the NJF workshop and to the Food days (please see section “Registration and fees” below).

The program of the workshop will include three invited keynote talks and presentations that will be selected from abstracts offered to the workshop.

Image by Tapani Hellman from Pixabay.

Invited speakers

The program will include three invited talks:

  • Dr. Csaba Jansik, Senior Scientist at Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), “The role of critical inputs in crisis preparedness – the case of Finnish food supply chain”.
  • Dr. Aleksandra Kekkonen, Senior Researcher at Estonian Business School: “Food Security and Resilience in Estonia”
  • Dr. Ólafur Ögmundarson, Associate Professor at the University of Iceland, Title of presentation to be confirmed.

Call for abstracts

We invite scientists and experts from different fields to propose their presentations to the conference. To propose a presentation, please submit an abstract around the following topics:

  • Resilience, risk management and crisis preparedness of agri-food sector and rural areas.
  • Competitiveness, productivity and efficiency in agriculture and food system.
  • Emerging issues in the Common Agricultural Policy, governance and agricultural commodity markets.
  • The future of farming, farmers and food system transformation
  • Models and applied methodologies to study food systems dynamics and trade-offs.
  • Enhancing economic and environmental sustainability, equity and fairness in the food systems.
  • Consumer preferences and consumption.
  • Free communications related to the theme of the workshop.

How to submit an abstract?

Please submit you abstract by using an online form that can be accessed by clicking here.

Abstracts can be proposed for oral presentations (15 minutes presentation plus 5 minutes for discussion) or for flash presentations (3 minutes (1-3 slides) presentation plus 2 minutes for questions). The organizing committee reserves the right to change the type of the presentation when compiling the program.

The extended abstract can be up to 2000 characters and it should explain in brief: Motivation of the study, objectives, material and methods, results and conclusion. Abstracts must be prepared in English. 

Abstracts must be submitted as early as possible, and no later than August 20th, 2025.

Abstracts selection

Abstract submission closes on the 20th of August 2025 (24:00 CEST). Information about the acceptance of abstracts for presentations will be communicated in two lots:

  • Abstracts that have been submitted by the end of July will be notified by the 5th of August.
  • Abstracts that are submitted in August will be notified by the 22nd of August.

Abstracts will be assessed by the members of the Scientific Committee at NJF for relevance and scientific quality. Accepted abstracts can participate in a competition for the best presentation.

Accepted abstracts will be compiled into an abstracts book that will be made available online at the NJF’s website. Participants will have an opportunity to submit their abstracts to Acta Agriculturae Scandinavica (standard peer-review process and fees of the journal will apply).

Registration and fees

Registration to the NJF workshop will be opened at the end of July at NJF’s new website system. The presenting author of accepted abstract must register to the workshop by the 5th of September 2025.

Registration fees are:

CategoryBefore September 1stAfter September 1st
Phd students who are NJF’s members5070
Other participants who are NJF’s members5080
Phd students who are not NJF’s members80100
Other participants who are not NJF’s members100120

Registration fee includes coffee breaks and lunch on the 16th of September. For non-members, the registration fee includes the member fee of NJF for year 2025. Please note that the participants of must register separately to the NJF workshop and to the Food days (please see section “Registration” below).

Venue

The workshop will be organized in Frami in Seinäjoki, Finland (Kampusranta 9, 60320 Seinäjoki, Finland). Frami is an active hub of universities, research institute, companies and other organizations operating in Seinäjoki and in South Ostrobothnia, the food province of Finland.

Frami is located approximately 1 km from the railway station.

Travelling to Seinäjoki

Seinäjoki is located approximately 350 kilometers North-West from Helsinki. Seinäjoki can be reached from Helsinki easily by train. During the daytime there is a train connection between Helsinki and Seinäjoki approximately once per hour. See https://www.vr.fi/en for timetables and tickets.

When travelling from abroad by plane, Helsinki-Vantaa airport (HEL) is the main airport of Finland. There is a train connection between Helsinki airport and Seinäjoki, with about 3 hours journey time.

As an alternative, the closest local airport is in Vaasa (VAA), which is located approximately 80 km from Seinäjoki. Vaasa airport has direct flights to Helsinki and Stockholm. There is a bus running between Vaasa airport and railway station, which is about 10 km from the airport. The train journey from Vaasa to Seinäjoki takes about 1 hour. There is also a ferry connection between Vaasa and Umeå, Sweden. https://www.wasaline.com/en/route-trips/

Accommodation

The following hotels are within 5-20 minutes walk from the workshop venue:

Further information

Jarkko Niemi, President of NJF, jarkko.niemi@luke.fi 

Silvia Gaiani, Secretary General at NJF.