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Project Topic
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GourMed aims to provide new, innovation embedding, optimised governance and operational models of agri-food supply chains ensuring/aiming at food quality, profitability and sustainability, to enhance value creation by Mediterranean value chains (especially vs cheap imports) and to balance power and value appropriation among Mediterranean VC actors. To achieve its aim, the project will pursue the following detailed project objectives: • to understand value creation & fair value appropriation in small-actor food value chains • to optimise governance & operational models of agri-food supply chain systems • to deliver tools to increase the competitiveness of MED agri-food chains • to implement and use real-life pilots to assess project impacts and validate outputs • to provide guidelines and criteria enabling sustainable Mediterranean agro-food chains • to enhance the managerial and innovation capacity of young agri-food entrepreneurs The project will achieve its objectives by: • employing six complementary small-actor food value chain pilots across the Mediterranean, each one focused on a specific Mediterranean food product, with different business & operational models and value chain attributes • delivering a balanced mix of new knowledge, methods, tools and guidelines, to ensure that agri-food supply chain systems offer fair prices for consumers and reasonable profits for producers • developing all project solutions taking into account not only the needs but, equally important, the capabilities of small food actors to adopt them • adopting a Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) approach coupled with open innovation, to align both the project progress and its outcomes with the values, needs and expectations of the society, through multi-stakeholder involvement. Both GourMed’s objectives and content are fully in line with the challenges and scope of the PRIMA Topic 2.3.1 as the project: • will increase the value created by small agri-food actors by: (i) identifying and building on their fundamental competitive advantages; (ii) employing a mix of value-adding business models, scientific methods and technological tools, as a competitive counterbalance to cheap imports. • will: (i) determine a fair distribution of the food euro from a consumer’s point of view; (ii) find factors that build consumers’ fairness judgments in food chains, with a focus on the farmer share; (iii) test consumers’ and commercial actors buying intention for MED diet fair food products , ensuring small farmers’ fair prices. • embeds innovative models based on a combination of local biodiversity, short chains, digitalisation of entire paradigmatic value chains, contractual farming and social inclusion. • will provide evidence on the advantages of short chains and local product varieties from an economic, environmental and social sustainability perspective (sustainability hotspots) and will empower them through implementation guidelines. Furthermore, it will provide hard facts on their potential to create more resilient agri-food chains for challenges like climate changes and mitigate the effect of global crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, it will increase fair trade and price formulation transparency through technological innovations (blockchain). • provides a balanced approach of organisational innovations (business models aligned with the local MED specificities), technological innovations (blockchain solution and consumer choice App towards fair & transparent MED food chains, aligned with small VC actors’ requirements & capabilities) and research approaches (capturing currently missing behavioural information from VC actors and consumers).
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