FOOD and Local, Agricultural, and Nutritional Diversity

Project Information

FOODLAND

Grant agreement ID: 862802

DOI

10.3030/862802

Project closed

EC signature date 4 May 2020

Start date 1 September 2020

End date 28 February 2025

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine, maritime and inland water research, and the bioeconomy

Total cost

€ 6 999 086,75

EU contribution

€ 6 999 086,75

Coordinated by

ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - UNIVERSITA DI BOLOGNA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - FOODLAND (FOOD and Local, Agricultural, and Nutritional Diversity)

Reporting period: 2023-09-01 to 2025-02-28

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The EU-funded project FoodLAND ultimately aimed at bridging local food operators with consumers and at contributing to closing this gap.
Accordingly, the project research and innovation activities supported the producers’ and consumers’ food-related behaviours that favour the diversity of food supplies and diets whose interrelations have been given little attention to date. Namely, its overall objective was to develop, implement, and validate innovative and sustainable technologies aimed at enhancing the nutrition performance of local food systems in 6 African countries, while strengthening agro-biodiversity and food diversity as well as diversity of healthy diets.

FoodLAND achieved a series of concrete results (e.g. datasets, prototypes, guidelines, training materials, practice abstracts, nutritional recommendations, research articles) and generated a wealth of knowledge and experiences relevant for food operators, policy makers and the scientific community. In this regard, some general considerations and recommendations aimed to enhance the innovation development and diffusion, the local smallholder farmers’ and SMEs’ well-being, and the consumers’ quality of life can be summarised as follows:

Research and practice implications as well as policy implications are detailed in the public Deliverable D5.17 - REPORT ON TECHNOLOGICAL VALIDATION RESULTS, EFFECTIVENESS OF EACH VALIDATED INNOVATIVE SYSTEM, PROCESS, AND TOOL, AND DESCRIPTION OF THE FOODLAND NEW FOOD PRODUCTS.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The project work has been characterised by the convergence and full integration between its two main pillars: the background research and the applied R&I. The background research has provided understanding of the conditions affecting the consumers and smallholder farmers’ choices relevant for the project objectives. Under this first pillar, the activities conducted with the urban and rural consumers (representative 10,000 individuals) have drawn a comprehensive picture of their food choices and nutritional needs. The activities conducted with the smallholder farmers (representative 6,500 producers) have provided a comprehensive understanding of the socio-economic and productive conditions affecting their farming and innovation propensity. The applied R&I activities have been conducted in all targets countries and all relevant sectors and phases of the selected local food supply chains and have developed and validated a series of innovation pilots (new tools, processes, and products).

All project tasks have been regularly completed in all countries and all planned 69 deliverables have been released. The main results include the FoodLAND Databank (including 50 datasets); 91 DOI-handled scientific articles/working papers published/submitted/prepared; a network of 14 Food Hubs (rural and peri-urban centers of innovation) created in the target 6 African countries; distinctive nutritional recommendation (#360) tailored to groups of consumers living in the rural and urban areas relevant for the project; 49 open prototypes produced (23 validated technological innovations and 26 characterised new food products); more than 3,000 local innovators (smallholder farmers and SMEs) involved.

A series of documents, tools, materials and initiatives have been implemented for dissemination and exploitation purposes (with more than 20,000 persons reached) such as training materials aimed to provide the local operators with information on relevant topics (e.g. market trends, climate change) and operational insights on innovation adoption; specific guidelines on the innovation deployment and management; open apps for smartphones enabling the access and use of the open precision systems; brief end-user manuals (56 practice abstracts) made available also through the EU EIP-AGRI Project Database; Open Platform where all relevant project consolidated documents are shared; public repository created for the project scientific products (Zenodo FoodLAND sub-community linked with the Community EU Open Research Repository); project web portal, social media and local channels spreading the open innovations with videos, promotion materials and press releases; consumer awareness raising campaigns carried out to promote – among other – the project nutritional recommendations and the use of the realised new local food products; R&I implications and policy briefs derived from the FoodLAND trans-disciplinary experience and addressing researchers, operators, practitioners and policy makers.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

FoodLAND was explicitly driven by transdisciplinary and holistic principles aimed to tackle nutrition, farming, and food processing issues in a coordinated way and will produce specific advancements on the state-of-the-art in different branches of knowledge including behavioural economics, plant breeding, agro-ecology, precision farming, horticulture, aquaculture, and food primary and secondary processing systems.

The achieved overall objective addressed three types of needs constraining the African food systems that identify the project expected results:

1. Organizational needs (i.e. inadequate coordination among food operators and scarce market orientation).
2. Technological needs (i.e. poor performances in local agro-food farming and processing systems).
3. Nutritional needs (i.e. unbalanced and unhealthy diets).

The achieved results generated an array of impacts including the following:
• Empowerment of local smallholder farmers and food operators (SMEs) in the network of 14 Food Hubs (implemented participative patterns, enhanced knowledge and skills) with special attention paid to gender equality.
• Enhanced coordination among producers along the local food supply chains and across countries (established network of Food Hubs).
• Reduction of the input use (herbicides, water, plastic materials, energy, …) and of the losses.
• Improvement of the environmental conditions (agri-ecological solutions, increased bio-diversity, valorisation of by-products and waste, ...) and progress toward low-carbon, climate-smart, and resilient food supply chains.
• Increase of the farming and food processing efficacy: augmented yields; increased product nutritional content; healthy and sensory properties, and shelf life; increased income and job opportunities.
• Boosted sustainability and food safety conditions across of the local food systems.
• Improved access to market opportunities and food operators’ socio-economic conditions.
• Contribution to healthy balanced African diets in 14 cities and 14 rural areas and to the reduction of malnutrition with focus on woman-child nutritional needs.
• Implementation of research structures and networks and reinforcement of collaboration between researchers.
• Contribution to policy decision-making processes for the benefit of the local smallholder farmers, food processors (SMEs), consumers, and civil society.

Gardening system

New foods

New lines