7 universities and research institut ions from 5 Mediterranean countries make up the consortium that is to invest 1.5M€ over the next 3 years to draw up a catalog of solutions for small farmers.
Can we stop the rural exodus? Can small farmers retain a higher percentage of the value added in the agri-food chain? What are the best strategies to achieve this? Are there new market opportunities for them? What governance issues prevent them from cooperating more effectively? Are government contracts only for large companies? Is e-commerce their big opportunity? What solutions are most successful? Can they be replicated in different international contexts?
The Partnership for Research and Innovation in the Mediterranean Area (PRIMA)1, which forms part of the EU’s Horizon 2020 research initiative, and research agencies in Spain, France, Italy, and Turkey have funded a research project that aims to address these topics. The project started with its kick-off meeting held on September 9th.
Entitled “Governing the agri-food supply chain: how to improve smallholders’ competitiveness” (AGRICOMPET), the project aims to answer the question: How can small farmers and their producer organizations (POs) design and implement sustainable organizational and managerial solutions to the most pressing challenges they face? Examples of such challenges are how to: promote cooperation through competitive organizational structures; manage internal conflicts and incentives within co-ops, producers’ organizations (PO), and Geographical Indications (GI); improve sustainability in the agrifood supply chain; identify e-business models to take up new market opportunities; enhance the GI institutional environment, and overcome issues relating to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The international consortium created to carry out this project is coordinated by Prof. Manuel González- Díaz from the University of Oviedo in Spain. It also includes: the French National Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE), the Greek Agricultural Economics Research Institute (AGRERI), the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (UNIBZ), and the University of Verona (UNIVR) both in Italy, Bogazici University in Turkey, and the University of La Rioja in Spain. The total budget is €1.5 million, to be distributed among the seven partners over three years.
The project includes three main work packages, focusing on (1) agricultural cooperatives and their producer organizations, (2) geographical indications (GIs), and (3) the study of new market opportunities such as e-commerce and public procurement, with the first two placing emphasis on the wine sector. Thus, from an international perspective, a wide range of governance and marketing issues that directly affect the competitiveness of these organizations and their associated producers will be addressed. At the methodological level, the team will adopt a multidisciplinary approach, including the vision and issues of the main socio-economic actors concerned. The overall objective of the AGRICOMPET project is to create a menu of governance solutions to help small producers and processors improve their competitiveness.
According to project coordinator, Prof. Manuel González-Díaz from the University of Oviedo, “The project comprises dedicated academics from different disciplines (economics, management, and marketing) and is methodologically based on co-creation, i.e., direct collaboration with co-ops, POs and GI decision-makers to jointly propose innovative organizational and governance solutions.
“The project results are expected to encourage the adoption of organizational and governance solutions to make Mediterranean producers more competitive. We intend to develop adaptable solutions and to work with decision-makers in agriculture, processing, trade, and the policy arena in different countries, and we thus expect to create spillover effects for producers in other Mediterranean countries that are not directly involved in AGRICOMPET.” adds González-Díaz.
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