SMARTCHAIN Is a Platform Launched to Back the Short Food Supply Chain

SMARTCHAIN, an EU-backed project dedicated to creating a hub for short food supply chains, went live online at www.smartchain-h2020.eu earlier this month.

The project kicked off in September 2018 under the Horizon 2020 framework which brings together 43 partner organizations with complementary types of knowledge from 11 countries.

For the next three years, the project aims to identify innovative solutions to practical problems that short food supply practitioners might be faced in their food production & processing, product development, market access and logistics & distributions operations. To this end, SMARTCHAIN puts a focus on the active involvement of end users including short food supply chain practitioners, farmers and small food businesses, agricultural cooperatives, farmer and consumer associations.

The joint venture will also generate concrete actions for short food supply chain entrepreneurs across Europe.

Furthermore, nine national innovation communities exclusively working on short food supply chain will be established in France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Serbia, Spain and Switzerland under the SMARTCHAIN banner.

“All participants to the SMARTCHAIN initiative are convinced that the short food supply chain model can be realized at a larger scale in an economically feasible, sustainable and environmentally friendly way. The outcomes of this project will aim at proving it,” said Susanne Braun, SMARTCHAIN’s project coordinator.