“Sustainability has to fit everywhere. It should be taken as a paradigm, as a framework in which all the needs have to be incorporated,”

José Badia

How is University of Valencia applying sustainability to SUSTAGRI 4.0? We reached out to José Badia, one of the faces behind University of Valencia. We wanted to know what University of Valencia is responsible for during our 2 year journey and how they are planning to apply the sustainability field in our action.

Hi, José. To start, what is University of Valencia main role in SUSTAGRI 4.0?

We come from the Department of Chemical Engineering, so we are really focused on sustainability and on environment, and we have two main roles: on one side, we are focused on researching the needs of our future users and how can we address those needs. And from the point of view of the result itself, which will be mainly the elaboration of our E-course, we are focused on three cornerstones: sustainability, digitalisation, and entrepreneurship. We are in charge of designing the structure and also on the training of the sustainability-related lessons.

A lot of what we are doing is about digitalisation, right, about teaching digital marketing tools? But where does sustainability fit into this?

That’s a very interesting question. Sustainability has to fit everywhere. It should be taken as a paradigm, as a framework in which all the needs have to be incorporated because it is not just about an individual analysis, it is more like a global effect. We collaborate with people, we interact with people, so this is our system and as far as we do any kind of business, we are somehow interacting with the system and that has an impact — an impact taken from the point of view of sustainability and this triple bottom line: people, profit, planet, meaning from a social, economic, and environmental point of view. This should be really relevant from the point of view of the analysis and before undertaking any kind of action in the field.

What excites you most about this project?

So many things, actually! But I feel that we can really help build a good training product for the people who will need it [young, small-scale farmers and agri-business owners]. And what do I mean? Since we’re focusing on this E-course, considering these three cornerstones, I think we can make a difference from the offer that it is already in the market in the field of training because of course you have really good courses on entrepreneurship, really good courses on digitalisation and also on sustainability. But how can we just take the most important things and wrap up them in a focused and structured course for them? So that’s what really excites me most in this project.

José Badia

Local Project Manager at University of Valencia