“Driving through the beautiful mountains to visiting Valencia, Alicante and Xàbia, swimming in the picturesque gorges, hiking, attending local festivals, relaxing at the beach and enjoying authentic Valencian and seafood paella it was a fantastic cultural experience.” Phito is a lot about recognising the beauty of our landscapes. Landscapes that share not only the picturesque views with us, but also food.
How Wageningen University students get an insider’s view of Phito
Every year, Phito helps students from Wageningen University get a very intimate insight into food production and agriculture in general in Valencia. Even though food plays an important role in this opportunity, students get to develop their consultancy skills on real cases like Phito.
Phito is a “case study” in an annual Academic Consultancy Training of Master students from Wageningen University. In this compulsory course of International Land and Water Management, students travel to Spain for one Dutch study period to work on real cases related to land and water management in an international environment.
How do the students help Phito?
They work like real consultants. They create their team profile, almost like their own consultancy firm, and officially propose work that actually contributes to solving real-life problems. Thanks to our partner CACV, also last year, we had a great team that worked on the TownSquare feature of the Phito app, giving invaluable insights into how the community feature of the app evolves.
This year, the SEIS team, again together with CACV mainly focused on steps to improve the internal communication between farmers and the cooperatives they work with. Their findings will be useful for further development of the Phito App’s feature My Coop that we currently focus on. But more on that once we process the data and transform it into something we can share with you.
What do the Wageningen University students say about their experience?
“Our visit to Valencia was an unforgettable experience. We received a very warm welcome from our commissioner, @cmartinez and @arubio who surprised us with amazing goody bags. We visited four cooperatives during our stay: CAMPOENGUERA, COFRUDECA, COARVALL and UNIVAL. Visiting these cooperatives was a real highlight, especially seeing their on-site production facilities and learning more about their work. We also thoroughly enjoyed a tasting session with local olive oil, olive pâté and honey at CAMPOENGUERA (pictures attached). A special thanks to Vignola, Raffaele and Carbellotti, Ilaria in this regards for their valuable support during the interviews.
Besides the project, we loved exploring the Valencia region. From driving through the beautiful mountains to visiting Valencia, Alicante and Xàbia, swimming in the picturesque gorges, hiking, attending local festivals, relaxing at the beach and enjoying authentic Valencian and seafood paella, it was a fantastic cultural experience.
Most importantly, meeting the cooperative technicians and seeing their work firsthand gave us valuable insights that formed the basis of our recommendations for the MyCoop feature. We are very grateful for everyone’s hospitality and openness throughout the project. We can boldly say, it was indeed an amazing experience.”
The SEIS Team: Carole Gnimpieba Zoleko , Jurre Leenders , Yali Hendrix , Qingzhao Tian, Yorgos Karyotis
