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EU RIA-H2020 project Food and Local, Agricultural, and Nutritional Diversity - FoodLAND

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FoodLAND aimed to enhance the diversity of food production and consumption in six African countries displaying different stages of the nutrition transition. To this end, FoodLAND created a network of 14 local Food Hubs – paired with 14 separate cities – that will aggregate relevant actors and serve as injection points for the introduction of innovations.

The project work has been characterized by the convergence and full integration between its two main pillars: the background research and the applied R&I. The background research has provided understanding of the conditions affecting the consumers and smallholder farmers’ choices relevant for the project objectives. Under this first pillar, the activities conducted with the urban and rural consumers (representative 10,000 individuals) have drawn a comprehensive picture of their food choices and nutritional needs. The activities conducted with the smallholder farmers (representative 6,500 producers) have provided a comprehensive understanding of the socio-economic and productive conditions affecting their farming and innovation propensity. The applied R&I activities have been conducted in all targets countries and all relevant sectors and phases of the selected local food supply chains and have developed and validated a series of innovation pilots (new tools, processes, and products).

All project tasks have been regularly completed in all countries and all planned 69 deliverables released. The main results include the FoodLAND Databank (with 50 datasets); 91 DOI-handled scientific articles/working papers published/ submitted/prepared; a network of 14 Food Hubs (rural and peri-urban centers of innovation) created in the target 6 African countries; distinctive nutritional recommendation (#360) tailored to groups of consumers living in the rural and urban areas relevant for the project; 49 open prototypes produced (23 validated technological innovations and 26 characterized new food products); more than 3,000 local innovators (smallholder farmers and SMEs) involved. The achieved results generated an array of impacts including the empowerment of the local operators (implemented participative patterns, enhanced knowledge and skills), the reduction of the input use (herbicides, water, plastic materials, energy, …) and losses, the increase of the farming and food processing effectiveness (augmented yields, increased product nutritional content, healthy and sensory properties, shelf life, increase income and job opportunities), and the improvement of the environmental conditions.

A series of documents, tools, materials and initiatives have been implemented for dissemination and exploitation purposes (with more than 20,000 persons reached) such as training materials aimed to provide the local operators with information on relevant topics (e.g., market trends, climate change) and operational insights on innovation adoption; specific guidelines on the innovation deployment and management; open apps for smartphones enabling the access and use of the open precision systems; brief end-user manuals (56 practice abstracts) made available also through the EU EIP-AGRI Project Database [https://eu-cap-network.ec.europa.eu/projects_en] ; Open Platform [https://foodland-africa.eu/foodland-open-platform/] where all relevant project consolidated documents are shared; public repository created for the project scientific products (Zenodo FoodLAND sub-community linked with the Community EU Open Research Repository [https://zenodo.org/communities/eu/] ); project web portal [https://foodland-africa.eu/], social media and local channels spreading the open innovations with videos, promotion materials and press releases; consumer awareness raising campaigns carried out to promote – among other – the project nutritional recommendations and the use of the realized new local food products; R&I implications and policy briefs derived from the FoodLAND trans-disciplinary experience and addressing researchers, operators, practitioners and policy makers.