FELLOW PROJECTS

The most important project for COREnet is its sister project – the EU4Advice project, which has taken a different approach to improving and transforming SFSC performance and impact across the EU. The approach focuses on in-depth analysis and emphasis on developing solutions in Living Labs in 4 selected EU-member states and then making them available across all 27 member states. Working together, the two projects will network SFSC practitioners and operating SFSCs for mutual learning and for the benefit of governments seeking to design and implement SFSC-friendly policies.

The i2connect project builds on the existing advisor networks – a resource of over 40,000 advisors and critical actors – to form a broader network. Its aim is to promote a new culture of bottom-up innovation support. The project will create an inventory of advisory practices in Europe. The best practices will be reviewed and studied as part of a training programme. Overall, the project will connect 32 organisations and support them through a moderated online platform for mutual coaching and sharing experiences.

FOODRUS is working to tackle food waste and losses by creating resilient food systems across nine European regions. To achieve this, the project will test 23 circular solutions through diverse forms of collaborative innovation, including among others: technological (ICT solutions to manage food losses and waste), social (educational materials and citizen science activities to promote sustainable consumption habits), organisational (last mile networks to foster local consumption and donation), and fiscal (new ‘Pay As You Throw’ schemes).

The WASTELESS Project (2023-2025) aims to develop and test a mix of innovative tools and methodologies for food losses and waste (FLW) measurement and monitoring. Additionally, it will also carry research activities on innovative processes and streams to valorise unavoidable FLW. WASTELESS ambition is to promote the reduction of FLW by at least 20% annually!

To address the shortcomings of long and short food value chains while capitalising on their advantages, FAIRCHAIN (2020-2024) will focus on the development of intermediate food value chains. This model combines the best of short (relocation and proximity between operators; shared social values and search for social cohesion; higher quality products) and long value chains (presence of several intermediaries; larger production volumes; improved logistics and distribution), and aims to transform existing food systems to address economic, social, environmental and health-related issues.

EU-FarmBook, is a Horizon Europe (2022-2029) project that is working at regional, national, and European (EU) levels, to build an Online Platform, gathering and sharing agriculture and forestry knowledge. The EU-FarmBook Online Platform is being developed to test a big idea: Can all the tangible outputs of EU-funded research and innovation projects be brought together and organized in one user-friendly platform to help get practical knowledge into the hands of the farmers, foresters, and advisors across Europe who need it most?

ModernAKIS, modernisation of Agriculture through more efficient and effective Agricultural Knowledge and Information Systems (AKIS), aims to improve AKIS actors’ capacities to leverage individual, organizational and systemic resources needed for the transformation towards more coherent, effective, and efficient AKIS systems and the transition to a more sustainable management and use of natural resources in farming and forestry. To this end it will build and foster a European network of at least 1.000 key AKIS actors, including AKIS coordination bodies, from all EU MS, who will act as linchpins in the transformation of the AKIS systems towards a more effective governance and the modernization of the European agri-food sector.

The WATSON project aims to provide a methodological framework combined with a set of tools and systems that can detect and prevent fraudulent activities along the whole food chain thus accelerating the deployment of transparency solutions in the EU food systems. This framework will improve the sustainability of food chains by increasing food safety and reducing food fraud through systemic innovations that will increase transparency in food supply chains through improved track-and-trace mechanisms containing accurate, time-relevant, and untampered information for the food product throughout its whole journey, plus also aims to equip authorities and policymakers with data, knowledge, and insights to have the complete situational awareness of the food chain.