Boosting Rural Bioeconomy Networks following multi-actor approaches

Project Information

BRANCHES

Grant agreement ID: 101000375

DOI

10.3030/101000375

Project closed

EC signature date 21 August 2020

Start date 1 January 2021

End date 31 December 2023

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine, maritime and inland water research, and the bioeconomy

Total cost

€ 1 999 308,75

EU contribution

€ 1 999 308,75

Coordinated by

LUONNONVARAKESKUS
Finland

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - BRANCHES (Boosting Rural Bioeconomy Networks following multi-actor approaches)

Reporting period: 2022-07-01 to 2023-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Research on creating a strong, self-sufficient, circular and sustainable bioeconomy has accelerated during the last ten years and a vast amount of knowledge has been generated. However, due to the multiple sectors and complex value chains involved, a significant part of that valuable information is in danger of remaining untapped, due to insufficient communication between experts on these advances, and practitioners, i.e. the potential end-users of this knowledge, such as farmers, foresters and entrepreneurs. The practitioners are expected to supply raw materials and endorse the strengthening of a sustainable bioeconomy as a major aspect of rural development in their regions, but require improved networks such as those developed in BRANCHES, in order to facilitate knowledge exchange and uptake.
BRANCHES aims to increase implementation of cost-efficient new technologies, mobilize more biomass and create new business opportunities in rural areas by improving and strengthening the connection between practice and science of biobased economy through offering a channel for two-way flow of information, new ideas and technologies within European agriculture & forestry practitioners particularly in rural areas.
During three year project, active networks in all participant countries has been established. Active dialogue between research and stakeholders has been achieved, discussions in workhops has been two-way, researchers have listened to the actors' knowledge gaps and needs, and stakeholders has got a lot of information about the best practices and new innovative ideas. During the project we have managed to increase the knowledge of possibilities in the field of bioeconomy and to lower the threshold for information retrieval and have shown where to ask for more information. We have been able to create meeting places for different actors and introduce them to each other.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

National Thematic Networks – NTN´s were established in all participant countries (DE, ES, FI, IT, PL) in the beginning of the project. NTNs have been developed successfully in all cases. The number of participants in the NTNs has reached 700. Efforts have been allocated specially during this period to explore and define the best alternative to exploit the NTNs once the project has ended. All NTN`s established own national webpages in local languages, and they has been used as a valuable information channel for example to invite members to events and to present new abstracts and results in local languages.
Contacts with neighbouring countries (PT, LT, LV, CZ, SL) were established also in the beginning of the project, and, online meetings have been held and partners has been visiting at each other’s organisations.
European knowledge transfer network work was initiated, connections to local EIP-AGRI members in each country were created. A meeting with EIP-AGRI service has been held to present BRANCHES project and to discuss about the collaboration. EIP-AGRI members were invited to participate to dedicated EIP-AGRI workshops in each country to present project work and abstracts.
A total of 65 Practical abstracts (PAs) were prepared during the project. Those have been published in visual pdf. form in English in project webpage (https://www.branchesproject.eu/materials/practice-abstracts-and-factsheets) and in Zenodo (https://www.zenodo.org/record/6633546#.YqRzKHZBzIVen) and in local languages on the network national webpages. All PAs have also been reported in EIP-AGRI format as a deliverable D5.8.
In total 40 workshops for practitioners were arranged in all participant countries and we reached 1766 participants in total. During the workshops the PAs were presented, and the practitioners’ views was taken into account for planning of new topics. The discussions between researchers and network members were very fruitful. Call for practitioners in the networks for the most interesting innovation, machines or methods were launched and winners in each country were selected.
10 Showcase Days were arranged, and videos of all of them were published in webpages. In showcases the most interesting cases (selected together with NTS) were presented to audience. In total 2677 participants visited in showcases. Case studies were prepared also in visual form, where the method is described more in detail.
Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) workshops were organized, and the purpose of those workshops was to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of each selected regions. Discussions in workshops, an online survey and expert interviews with stakeholders in the partner countries were carried out to identify political obstacles on regional levels . This analysis was complemented by a list of good policy practices. Two life cycle analyses were carried out to add information on environmental hotspots in innovative value chains of the regions. Finally, SWOT analysis carried out in 2022 were enriched with application of TOWS analysis for the definition of strategic measures to tackle regional bioeconomy challenges and leverage current opportunities. Together with the findings from collected business case examples from each region and the top 5 prioritized determinant regional factors for the adoption of innovations, recommendations were developed per value chain and per region.
Project dissemination has been very active. Newsletters has been published and shared with NTNs, in addition NTNs has been disseminate the published PAs. PAs has been published in nice visual form, and they can be upload from project webpage. Also case studies was published in visual form as well as business case descriptions.
The unplanned factsheets Bioenergy in a time of crisis and Drivers and barriers for the implementation of bioenergy an bioeconomy technologies in rural areas was decided to publish during the project because the topics were extremely topical and important.
BRANCHES project social media content has been viewed and shared 165 000 times (Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Facebook).

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

With better communication and understanding we managed to transfer research results to a practical level. These results, for example about improving cost efficiency, improving environmental effects, new technologies and methods, could have remarkable effects to the value chains. The available information is often scattered or published in scientific literature, thus not easily accessible for farmers, foresters and small entrepreneurs. We screened the most interesting or promising results from a practitioner point of view and provide understandable information, also in National languages, disseminated actively through different efficient channels. A key aspect here was the need of practitioners, their needs were asked in order to provide the most relevant and desired information. Two way interaction, knowledge transfer of most relevant solutions, and concrete demonstration of suitable new solutions (e.g. through show case days) were essential actions within the BRANCHES project. The national thematic network in each partner countries offered a great base for this work.
The transfer of existing knowledge of innovative practices for biomass supply and bioenergy generation in rural areas into practice was the primary aim of the BRANCHES project. A successfully completed project aims at the use of overall more sustainable practices by farmers, foresters and entrepreneurs in the bioeconomy sector by 2030.

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