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Project Topic
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The European Commission has identified Mountain areas as being amongst the most vulnerable areas to climate change. Farming here is extremely challenging due to the harsh climates that result in low productivities, the relative isolations from major markets, and the existence of a negative demographic trend, with the youth migrating toward urban areas. MountainHER aims at restoring farm productivity, diversify income opportunities, and raise social inclusion in six pilot mountain communities in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, Croatia, and Italy. The fields of these farming communities will be used as living labs in a participatory approach to assess the productivity and sustainability gains of cultivating barley and durum wheat cultivars (WP2) derived from ancient grains under agroecological management (WP3). These results will be used to promote circular economies in the form of community-based seed enterprises for the multiplication and sale of the new cultivars, and community-based fertilizer enterprises for the production and sale of non-synthetic fertilizers produced from waste: biochar, manure, and compost. Income opportunities will be created by integrating women associations in the continuum from farm to fork for transforming the harvests into added value foods, while giving them market opportunities. The growers’ associations will be linked with local female-owned cooperatives specialized in the transformation of grains into traditional food and malt products (WP4). New integrative governance practices will be used to support the creation of short value chains with stronger market competitiveness and balanced re-distribution of profits. The added value food products will be analyzed for organoleptic properties (WP5) and assessed for their consumers appreciations and physical / digital retail opportunities (WP6). In turn, the centralization of the role of women as income generators for the whole community will facilitate their social inclusion and will favor their recognition as leaders. Also, the returning youth will be integrated by providing new exciting job opportunities linked to digital or physical sales, eco-tourism, and circular economy strategies. MountainHER sets the ground-breaking objective of changing the social and economic status of remote mountain communities through agroecological interventions. This new concept links farmers, cooperatives, and other members of the mountain communities along the farming system. In that sense, MountainHER is well aligned to the call topic since it aims at raising productivity and profitability of farming communities, while improving the overall resilience of the system. The food system proposed here is based on dryland cereals, which is substantially carbon neutral, and its emissions will be further reduced by our interventions and shortening of the value chain. The agricultural system selected are also among the most exposed to climate change and therefore at greater needs for immediate intervention. MountainHER considers women empowerment as the key driver for change, using the revision of the associations’ governance as an entry point to better integrate the women into the community at large. Access to market will be ensured by training the cooperatives to become better entrepreneurs. At the same time, retailers (physical and digital) and consumers are also engaged in this project to ensure that the food and malt products can be commercialized effectively. Furthermore, the governance revision to better integrate growers and cooperatives will ensure a more balanced redistribution of profit margins along the short value chain. Hence, rural cooperatives will purchase local harvests at a higher price because of its agroecological production system. These higher costs will then be recovered by selling at a higher price the final product, using the label to show its ecological nature. Therefore, higher profits will be generated for farmers, cooperatives, and retailers.
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