Francisco has a postgraduate degree in Quality Management and Agro-Food Marketing from the University of Évora (Portugal), during his student experience he was part of the student association for 7 years, managing a team of 450 people, where he was on its board and worked as treasurer, organising events with more than 10,000 participants. In addition, he was the student representative in the High Council of the University.He served as Director of Operations and Agronomist Engineer in two Agro-Industry companies, where he actively coordinated and led the production process, where he was active in the management department and restructured the productive and sustainable context of the production of over 300 products in the areas of agriculture, livestock and various agro-industries. Taking advantage of his previous experience, he decided to build two separate businesses, in the tourism and livestock sectors. The area of his latest prominent project is in sustainability and providing premium nutritional ingredients using insect benefits on an industrial scale, as an alternative protein source.He worked as Business Development Director for Mandara Lda, a company dedicated to the cultivation and production of medical cannabis in the European market. This company has just received the pre-licence for cultivation from Infarmed, an application in which I participated, and in the process of being one of the first 10 fully licensed GMP cultivators in Portugal.He also worked as Business Development Manager at Sillican Valey-Cannabis Portugal, Lda, where he provided the necessary guidance for the creation of a company for the production of medicinal cannabis and food products derived from cannabis, in addition to the production of hemp and its derivatives.
