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Project Topic
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InovFarmer.MED aims to improve Mediterranean supply chain by promoting the adoption of innovative and sustainable Business models and partnership on the agro-food systems, providing strategies and digital technologies to cope with any crisis. InovFarmer.MED is expected to improve the two study case agri-food value chain products, valorizing Fig and Prickly Pear, by enabling the adoption of adapted Digital technologies that pave the way for a smart agri-food supply chain linking farmers/producers to food processing and retail in three piloting sites - Portugal, Algeria and Egypt. Specific objectives and the approach to achieve them are: i) To analyze current and traditional production methods applied by small scale-farmers and needs to be addressed in co-creative and multi-actor processes to increase food production and avoid food loss. ii) To monitor fruit ripening, productivity, sales prices, stocks management and improve end-product quality in the production of fig and prickly pear, using smart technologies, and adoption of best practices to increase fruit profitability in fresh marketing channels. iii) To establish scientific eco-friendly methodologies for processing fresh fruits or edible parts of the plant with direct flow to dedicated transformers, preserving the nutritional and bioactive properties in the new products obtained. iv) To develop and implement training with and for small-scale farmers by the preparation of a toolkit for sustainable production, transformation and commercialization, based on the knowledge gathered from the farmers and relevant actors of the supply chain, scientific community and strategies to build resilient business models encompassing user-centric digital services that support smallholders access to market. v) To design innovative business models that will improve the interconnection between farmers, smallholder’s organizations, transformers, retailers and consumers, using different digital technologies and platforms, such as mobile apps and e-commerce, to serve the various stages of the value chain of the targeted agro-products, increasing the income of small-scale farmers from the Mediterranean basin communities. The innovative business model ecosystem will strengthen the position of smallholders and rural business, potentiating jobs creation and the withholding of as much added value as possible in rural regions. This project will facilitate the diversification of quality products, including processed ones, guaranteeing a more stable income, and therefore increasing resilience, leveraged by a better access to the marketing and labor channels available through smart agri-food supply chains that stimulate economic growth and a more balanced territorial development.
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