TRADITOM explores new opportunities for innovation in EIP-AGRI workshop

TRADITOM participated in the EIP-AGRI workshop “Innovation in the supply chain:  creating value together” from February 6-7, 2018 in Lyon (FR). The aim of this two-day workshop was to explore success stories, challenges and future collaborations through innovation in the supply chain.

TRADITOM partners are interested to identify connections with already established EIP Operational Groups (OG) but also to learn whether Operational Groups and Thematic Network instruments of EIP-AGRI can be of interest to further disseminate and exploit TRADITOM results through participation in outreach and future collaborative projects with stakeholders in the rural sector.

The workshop program included an ”Operation Groups and Research Project”- exhibition where  coordinator Antonio Granell (CSIC) had the opportunity to present TRADITOM. He introduced the objectives and main achievements to all participating OGs (mostly from Italy and France) who showed great enthusiasm and interest in the project, the results and the materials generated.  In the breakout session “Open Space”, the TRADITOM coordinator proposed to OG members to participate in a round table discussion about how to even the path from a multi-actor research project to an operational group (OG) or thematic network (TN). The roundtable gathered more than 25 people and intensively discussed what the most challenging issues were, namely how to make information available for the farmers in different countries and how to overcome foreign language limitations. Together the participants came up with the idea to establish an information repository for the results of H2020 funded projects that could be of interest for farmers but that also is “farmers friendly”,i.e. easy to access and  available in different languages, which was considered a priority. The needs of farmers in terms of research objectives need to be identified and also networking of farmers at both the national and international levels should be increased and facilitated. Discussion about existing OGs and how to motivate them to participate in research projects is of high interest for TRADITOM and different possibilities for participation are now being explored.

After the event, EIP-AGRI published a short report covering the potential solutions that were explored by the participants. The report is available on the EIP-AGRI website. More publications on the event can be found here – the link features a detailed participants list and a brochure presenting 50 projects including TRADITOM.