Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CO-FRESH (CO-creating sustainable and competitive FRuits and vEgetableS’ value cHains in Europe)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2020-10-01 do 2022-03-31
CO-FRESH (CO-creating sustainable and competitive FRuits and vEgetableS’ value cHains in Europe) is an innovation action project funded by the European Union’s research and innovation programme Horizon2020, with the aim to promote more sustainable and efficient agri-food value chains through concrete actions and approaches. The project, with a duration of 42 months (starting on the 1st October 2020) and a total budget of 7.5 Million Euros, brings together key actors from pilot agri-food value chains; actors’ associations (farmers, food producers, cooperatives, consumers); experts for technological (including digital) and non-technological (including social, organizational, and institutional) solutions; as well as experts in environmental and social science, economic sustainability, and in consumer acceptance.
Agrifood value chains are currently facing systemic challenges related to climate change, environmental degradation and stressed resources, rapid technological innovations and digital transformation, increasing globalized markets, and an urgent need to improve social, economic and environmental sustainability. These trends are challenging for all value chain actors, but particularly for farmers as they are constrained by low margins, locational inflexibility and weak bargaining power. At the same time, agrifood value chains, over the years, have become more closely coordinated, to allow food safety tracking and tracing, efficient logistics, consumer responsiveness and enhanced innovation performance. Value chain coordination and collaboration offers opportunities for improving sustainability and enhancing competitiveness.
Starting from current best practices and key success factors observed and analysed in innovative value chains and the state of the art in technological and non-technological approaches, CO-FRESH proposes to develop techniques, tools and insights for the re-design of agri-food value chains. Through collaborative and systemic approaches, the tools and formats will be applied in 7 pilot cases representing diverse fruit and vegetables agri-food value chains (including protein crops for food and feed) across Europe. CO-FRESH will use the Intervention Research approach to study models of collective innovation action within and across organisations. The main objective of CO-FRESH is to (re)design and pilot innovative systemic approaches to agri-food value chains to scale up this innovation at European level. These innovative approaches will improve economic, social and environmental performance/efficiency of these value chains, through smart integration of technological, social, organisational, managerial and institutional innovations; all of which serve to make them more sustainable.
Agrifood value chains are currently facing systemic challenges related to climate change, environmental degradation and stressed resources, rapid technological innovations and digital transformation, increasing globalized markets, and an urgent need to improve social, economic and environmental sustainability. These trends are challenging for all value chain actors, but particularly for farmers as they are constrained by low margins, locational inflexibility and weak bargaining power. At the same time, agrifood value chains, over the years, have become more closely coordinated, to allow food safety tracking and tracing, efficient logistics, consumer responsiveness and enhanced innovation performance. Value chain coordination and collaboration offers opportunities for improving sustainability and enhancing competitiveness.
Starting from current best practices and key success factors observed and analysed in innovative value chains and the state of the art in technological and non-technological approaches, CO-FRESH proposes to develop techniques, tools and insights for the re-design of agri-food value chains. Through collaborative and systemic approaches, the tools and formats will be applied in 7 pilot cases representing diverse fruit and vegetables agri-food value chains (including protein crops for food and feed) across Europe. CO-FRESH will use the Intervention Research approach to study models of collective innovation action within and across organisations. The main objective of CO-FRESH is to (re)design and pilot innovative systemic approaches to agri-food value chains to scale up this innovation at European level. These innovative approaches will improve economic, social and environmental performance/efficiency of these value chains, through smart integration of technological, social, organisational, managerial and institutional innovations; all of which serve to make them more sustainable.
In this first 18 months, the scheduled activities foreseen in the project have been successfully completed following the established methodological steps: The 1st Step of the project “Develop situation & frameworks of sustainable, innovative and competitive agrifood value chains” has been achieved by an extensive literature review on their key success factors and collecting data on more than 100 sustainable, innovative and competitive agrifood value chains in Europe (with a focus on Fruits & Vegetables chains). On the basis of the data collected, a common framework and set of indicators have been developed for the assessing and promoting sustainability, innovativeness and competitiveness of fruit and vegetables (including legume crops) in Europe. In addition to analyzing the internal characteristics of the innovative and sustainable value chains, the project has explored the impact of public policies (as an external factor). Finally, based on all data collected we have identified 20 innovative and sustainable business models and explored the key success factors of these business models. Corresponding reports are available in Publications - CO-FRESH web.
In the 7 Pilot Cases of the project, the aim is to assess, through demonstration studies, how innovative solutions, both technological and non-technological, can help to improve their sustainability, efficiency and competitiveness. Thus, Step 2- “Specify Program Structures and Processes” focus at designing suitable interventions to be tested in each project Pilot Case. In this first 18 months, Pilot Cases has been defined and detailed data of each Pilot Case have been collected to assess their Baseline situation from Environmental and socioeconomic point of view using suitable Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) methodologies. The selection of innovative solutions to be tested in each Pilot Case will be selected in a co-creative way, involving stakeholders along each value chain in the co-creation process in corresponding Working Groups. For this purpose, a Co-creation methodology has been developed and relevant partners have been trained to conduct a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis and Co-Creation workshops. Following these workshops, the intervention plan for each Pilot Case will be defined in the coming months.
In parallel, to maximize the impact of the project, a strategy has been developed for the exploitation of project results, that includes the design of a “new business cases toolkit “for the replicability of the CO-FRESH approaches in new value chains beyond the project. Additionally, a Plan for the communication and dissemination of CO-FRESH results has been designed to effectively approach to reach all relevant actors of the agri-food sector. It should be noted that a networking with other H2020 projects (RUR-06-2020, RUR-07-2020) has been organized from the starting of the project and the connection with thematic networks, operational groups from agricultural European Innovation Partnership (EIP-AGRI) and other initiatives (e.g. Strategic Working Groups of the Standing Committee on Agricultural Research: AKIS (Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems) and FOOD SYSTEMS) has been established to ensure cooperation aiming at the production of a joint policy brief at the end of the project.
In the 7 Pilot Cases of the project, the aim is to assess, through demonstration studies, how innovative solutions, both technological and non-technological, can help to improve their sustainability, efficiency and competitiveness. Thus, Step 2- “Specify Program Structures and Processes” focus at designing suitable interventions to be tested in each project Pilot Case. In this first 18 months, Pilot Cases has been defined and detailed data of each Pilot Case have been collected to assess their Baseline situation from Environmental and socioeconomic point of view using suitable Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) methodologies. The selection of innovative solutions to be tested in each Pilot Case will be selected in a co-creative way, involving stakeholders along each value chain in the co-creation process in corresponding Working Groups. For this purpose, a Co-creation methodology has been developed and relevant partners have been trained to conduct a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis and Co-Creation workshops. Following these workshops, the intervention plan for each Pilot Case will be defined in the coming months.
In parallel, to maximize the impact of the project, a strategy has been developed for the exploitation of project results, that includes the design of a “new business cases toolkit “for the replicability of the CO-FRESH approaches in new value chains beyond the project. Additionally, a Plan for the communication and dissemination of CO-FRESH results has been designed to effectively approach to reach all relevant actors of the agri-food sector. It should be noted that a networking with other H2020 projects (RUR-06-2020, RUR-07-2020) has been organized from the starting of the project and the connection with thematic networks, operational groups from agricultural European Innovation Partnership (EIP-AGRI) and other initiatives (e.g. Strategic Working Groups of the Standing Committee on Agricultural Research: AKIS (Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems) and FOOD SYSTEMS) has been established to ensure cooperation aiming at the production of a joint policy brief at the end of the project.
In the following months, the technological and non-technological interventions to be brought into the different Pilot Cases value chains will be selected using the co-creation methodology defined for this purpose. Once the innovations identified, corresponding intervention plans will be designed and demonstrated in WP3 “Pilot and monitoring re-designed innovative value chains”. LCA and S-LCA studies will be performed to validate the environmental innovative scenario, analyse the social and economic impact of the innovations implemented in each Pilot Case and compared with the baseline already performed during the First half of the project.
Continuous survey of innovations and exploitable results produced in the project will be accompanied by IPR potential assessment to assure an effective business development and market introduction. The cooperation with other RUR-06 and RUR-07 projects and EIP-AGRI will go on as well as exchanges with related EIP-AGRI Operational Groups and SCAR AKIS, Food Systems and Bioeconomy SWG both at the level of general exchange meetings and physical territorial activities always with the aim to maximise the project impact of CO-FRESH.
Continuous survey of innovations and exploitable results produced in the project will be accompanied by IPR potential assessment to assure an effective business development and market introduction. The cooperation with other RUR-06 and RUR-07 projects and EIP-AGRI will go on as well as exchanges with related EIP-AGRI Operational Groups and SCAR AKIS, Food Systems and Bioeconomy SWG both at the level of general exchange meetings and physical territorial activities always with the aim to maximise the project impact of CO-FRESH.