In the EU, organic and low input cereal food systems are emerging to give an answer to the sustainability crisis of the conventional agri-food sector. These alternative systems are generally short supply chains based on local, decentralized approaches to production and processing, with regard to quality, health, and strong community identities, where agronomic, food manufacturing and marketing diversity are deeply embedded.
The CERERE consortium (Figure 1) aimed at fostering and speeding up these innovations in order to strengthen the economic, social and environmental sustainability of these cereal food systems, to consolidate links between practitioners and researchers, to further enhance the resilience of agro-ecosystems and to make the overall sector better recognized by society. By creating a multi-actor network of researchers and communities of practice, by adopting a bottom-up participatory approach, and by liaising with EIP-AGRI Operational Groups, CERERE contributed to synthesize, share and disseminate existing best practices, research results and co-innovative solutions in organic/low-input cereal food systems, focusing on agro-biodiversity and values of quality and health. Through its activities of networking, training and dissemination, CERERE addressed key issues and the most urgent needs of these systems. For each of these, CERERE identified opportunities to better integrate science and practice, paving the way for more dynamic interactions between communities of practices and researchers.
To achieve stated objectives, the CERERE project was structured in six work packages (figure 2).
