Organic Centre Wales (OCW) is delighted to announce that Dafydd Owen has been appointed as Manager of the organic supply chain project Better Organic Business Links, which began this summer.

Dafydd is a farmer's son from Bronant near Tregaron. After completing his degree in Agricultural Economics at Bangor University Dafydd worked on an agricultural development project in Nepal with VSO and on his return to Wales in 1988 joined the NFU in Powys as a Policy Advisor.

He worked in Mid and South Wales for four years before moving to NFU head office in London as a Senior Policy Advisor in the Livestock Department. He spent the last five years of his NFU career as head of the Information and Communication Technology department and moved back to Wales with his family in 2004.

For the last five years Dafydd has been working for the bilingual communications company StrataMatrix, based in Aberystwyth. In January of this year he changed to working for them on a part-time freelance basis and joined Transition Lampeter as a part-time Project Officer.

Dafydd said: "I'm very pleased to be joining this interesting project at a time when organic food is at a pivotal stage. My work with the Transition movement has shown clearly that sustainable and low carbon food production systems will be of increasing importance in the future, and organic farming must be one of the primary means of achieving this."

The BOBL project is funded through the Rural Development Plan for Wales 2007-2013, which is funded by the Welsh Assembly Government and the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development. It will run over three years.

In addition to the manager and administrator, OCW will be recruiting the Supply Chains Field Officer, and suitable candidates are invited to contact OCW for more details.

"We are delighted that Dafydd is joining us to do this much-needed work," said Sue Fowler, Director of OCW. "Organic farming is leading the way in environmental performance, but we need to improve the efficiency of our supply chains too, and build consumer understanding and loyalty so that the sector can reach its potential."

Dafydd will join OCW on 1 December, and will be at the Winter Fair, where OCW has a stand in the balcony of the livestock building.