Program: H2020 Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine, maritime and inland water research and bioeconomy
Deadlines:
Deadline Model : single-stage
In the context of a greater market-orientation of the Common
Agricultural Policy (CAP), one of the specific post 2020 CAP objectives
is to rebalance the farmers' position in the food chain[1].
The food supply chain is vulnerable to unfocused and even unfair
trading due to strong imbalances between small and large operators:
often farmers and small operators in the food supply chain have hardly
any information or connection with the consumer to improve their offer
and adapt it to the demand. A knowledge-based approach will strengthen
the sector's market orientation and enhance its competitiveness,
incentivising organisational innovation along the supply chain,
triggered by new emerging technologies and evolving consumer demand[2].
Zooming in on the connections between producers and consumers therefore
has the potential to improve farmers' position in the value chain, as
it will strengthen capacity-building. Innovative supply chains and novel
food systems may tackle the downward pressure on farm gate prices and
at the same time make them more sustainable, e.g. by reducing CO2
emissions. Focus on costs and margins is needed: even in innovative
chains, improvement of primary producers' incomes should not be taken
for granted: cases illustrate that costs attributed to the
intermediaries in short supply chains may rise from 20 up until 50%.
Although smaller tenders fit for small-scale producers are vital to
local and fresher food in public offices, schools and hospitals, the
experience needed to enable adequate public procurement approaches is
generally lacking[3]. Proposals have ample opportunity to build on sharing of good practices developed to overcome all these barriers.
Activities should look into concrete ways for producers to collaborate
on opportunities which are both consumer driven and conducive to
improving farmers' incomes (e.g. economies of scale, smarter
distribution, reduction of environmental footprints, territorial
approaches etc.), building on a set of good examples of efficient and
applicable approaches to do so. Proposals shall collect and develop good
practices for mutually beneficial cooperation, integrating the needs of
primary producers and consumers in a hands-on approach. Proposals shall
pay particular attention to the calculation of costs and margins for
each link in the supply chain. Activities may cover infrastructure and
logistics for efficient access to consumers such as smart joint
logistics of producers' groups, outsourcing of transport to
entrepreneurs sharing the values of the producers, optimising sales
order picking and transport routes, regaining consumers' trust by
shortening chains, direct sales and collaboration, etc. This should lead
to a collection of good examples showing efficient access to markets,
with a view to reducing costs for intermediaries as much as possible.
Proposals should help to develop identity of primary producers and
market position e.g. through unique selling points. They may touch upon
on incentives from grassroots' initiatives like local food communities,
agri-food clusters or food policy councils, the role of communities of
practice and of knowledge hubs and even deal with legal constraints in
so far as they support the envisaged impacts of this topic.
Simultaneously, educational aspects may also be covered, such as
connecting producers with consumers via open days, producer events,
culinary events with local producers, food education in school
curricula, celebrating local food heroes, promotion of local food
labels, etc., leading to a set of concrete examples of education and
awareness raising activities. Moreover, activities should support
development of new public procurement approaches for offices, schools,
hospitals, etc. interactively building smaller tenders to enable
provision of local and seasonal food. Activities should make contracting
authorities share experiences, create a dialogue with suppliers to
attune supply and demand, and develop support mechanisms for smaller
suppliers to meet tender requirements. Proposals shall fall under the
concept of the 'multi-actor approach'[4]
with a consortium based on a balanced mix of actors with complementary
knowledge clearly including farmers/foresters, farmers' groups,
advisors, contracting authorities and policy makers. The project's
strategy, as well as related projects RUR-06-2020 and RUR-07-2020 should
be coordinated with the SCAR AKIS Strategic Working Group (SWG) with a
view to cross-fertilise between projects under this topic, in order to
help sharing conclusions of the project with the competent policy makers
and national or regional authorities. Projects should deliver a
substantial number of "practice abstracts" in the common EIP-AGRI
format, including audio-visual material as much as possible.