NARC concludes Using Circular Economy in Food Processing

 Jordan Daily– Dr. Nizar Haddad, the Director General of the National Agricultural Research Center ‘NARC’ , graduated the first group of beneficiaries of the training program “Using Circular Economy in Food Processing”, which was conducted for three weeks, within the activities of the Social Inclusion Project (HELIOS) funded by the European Program for Cooperation across Borders in the Mediterranean ‘ENI CBC MED’

Dr. Haddad emphasized on the importance of this course in introducing the participants to the basic technical skills, entrepreneurship and soft skills within the framework of the social responsibility of NARC and its vision of rehabilitating young men and women by creating job opportunities, and providing them with knowledge of modern technologies in food processing and their adaptation to climate change, as the food industry is recently receiving attention on a large scale in developing countries. “Preserving the natural resources has become a vital challenge and the traditional linear model of collecting raw materials, manufacturing, disposing of waste, and even relying on materials that the end user can recycle, was adopted on the basis of saving the environment. Consumers have become more aware of preserving the environment than they were before, and they deal very carefully with the choice of food and that real sustainability of food takes place in a circular manner where resources are recovered with the highest possible quality to be reused and continue to benefit from them”. Haddad said

He further added that circular economy can be applied on everything from special food processing to packaging, in a way that the consumer will reduce waste, and consequently will have a positive impact on the environment and climate change through the rehabilitation and training of participants, extending to their families and their economic empowerment

The twenty-one participants benefited from the face-to-face training program, as most of them are newly graduated agricultural engineers, to qualify them to be able to create job opportunities in the field of food processing. This program will continue to empower many other categories

Eng. Alaa Wahbeh, head of the Climate Change Department at NARC and project coordinator, stated that the team at NARC designed four training programs for the target groups that are destined to building the capacities of young men and women in the areas of circular economy and blue economy, and that the target groups are within Balqa Governorate and the Jordan Valley