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Europe’s agri-food systems need to evolve in a world that is being transformed by technological innovation. At the same time, these vital sectors are faced with local and global challenges arising from climate change, environmental decline and a scarcity of resources.
“These trends are challenging for all value chain actors, but particularly for farmers, as they are constrained by low margins, geography and weak bargaining power,” says Inés Echeverría, CO-FRESH project coordinator and R&D&I director at CNTA in Spain.
In the CO-FRESH project, Echeverría coordinated a broad consortium of partners across the EU with the goal of adapting Europe’s agri-food systems to become more socially, economically and environmentally sustainable and better prepared for the future.
In seven case studies, CO-FRESH redesigned and piloted new systemic approaches to agri-food production by developing new techniques, tools and insights, and aimed to take these innovations Europe-wide.
Specifically, the project explored more efficient use of resources across fruit and vegetable (F&V) value chains, along with cutting the amount of plastic and food waste, while also aiming to increase the shelf life of minimally processed foods such as bagged salads.
“The success of CO-FRESH is based on the holistic approach to F&V value chains, helping actors along the chain to work together more effectively,” adds Echeverría. “The seven pilot cases remain a living example of how to apply innovations.”
Transforming challenges into opportunities
CO-FRESH brought about better cooperation between many partners in Europe’s F&V value chain, and held a series of meetings which brought together industry professionals to harness a broad range of knowledge and ideas.
Through these workshops, the potential impact, feasibility and level of innovation of over 200 proposed innovations were discussed, before a shortlist of 19 were selected to be used across the 7 pilot cases.
“The co-creation methodology allowed the active participation of representatives from the entire supply chain of each of the seven pilot cases,” explains Echeverría. These pilot cases were run in France, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain, covering a range of farms producing fruit, salads, mushrooms, legumes and pork.
Implementing innovation
Innovative approaches that the project successfully implemented include:
- using intelligent internet of things systems to reduce water consumption in small farms by optimising irrigation;
- developing low-processed plant-based foods from local crops;
- reducing plastic waste through the use of compostable bioplastics for food packaging.
The team developed a new certification scheme to raise awareness and reduce the production of microplastics in the F&V supply chain, as well as a governance tool to integrate and coordinate stakeholders along short value chains.
To spread their findings across Europe’s agri-food sector, CO-FRESH created over 20 videos available on YouTube, along with a final project video shown at an event in Brussels. The team gave presentations at over 120 fairs, conferences, workshops and meetings, and reached a broad spectrum of agri-food stakeholders.
Alongside this, the project led to over 100 published articles, CO-FRESH newsletters and short communications. Results from the project were also presented at several scientific conferences and meetings, with 10 open access scientific articles currently published and 4 more under review.
Continued evolution
The pilot studies will continue to implement the most successful innovations, some of which are already undergoing test phases with large markets to validate their real-world feasibility. The work will also continue through the strong community built by those working in the agri-food industry.
CO-FRESH was also invited to participate in the 10th edition of the European Commission’s prestigious Innovation Radar Prize.
“Networking with sister projects (Ploutos, FAIRCHAIN, LOWINFOOD and FOODRUS) and participating in several joint events with decision makers and public authorities has strengthened our message, learnings and conclusions,” says Echeverría. “This collaboration will continue after the project by means of CO-FRESH partners participating in networks, projects and dissemination events.”