Newsletter

Welcome to the first edition of the COACH newsletter

Published three times a year, this newsletter will update you about all the activities of the COACH project on collaborative short food supply chains.

What is COACH?

COACH stands for ‘Collaborative Agri-food Chains’. This three year, EU-funded, project is working to facilitate collaboration between farmers, consumers, local governments and other actors to scale up short agri-food chains which rebalance farmers’ position in the market and drive innovation in territorial food systems.

The project is being co-ordinated by a team from the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience, at Coventry University, and the multi-actor consortium brings together an exciting mix of universities, civil society networks, a major network of local governments committed to sustainable urban development, plus Copenhagen, one of the leading European cities as an exemplar of sustainable public food procurement. As project co-ordinator, Professor Moya Kneafsey explains:

“The COACH project is all about collaboration. It’s about people working together to achieve common goals, sharing information and resources and jointly planning and implementing activities. But whilst it might seem like common sense to suggest that collaboration is important for short food supply chains to flourish, the practicalities are not always so straightforward.

There are many questions to consider, such as, how are common goals to be agreed upon? Who is – or should be - involved in the decision-making process? Are the processes socially inclusive? What are the costs and benefits to small-scale producers and consumers? What mechanisms, policies and governance structures would enable short food supply chains to scale up or scale out?

These are just some of the issues COACH is aiming to tackle through our programme of multi-actor dialogues, knowledge exchanges, training and development activities. Using the concept of territorial food systems as a framework, our activities are designed to build and strengthen collaboration between actors involved in short food supply chains, civic food networks, and public sector food procurement. Read on to find out more!”

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What does COACH plan to do?

COACH has five specific objectives, but in short, looks to share good practices and create useful tools that empower farmers, citizens and other actors, focusing on topic areas like public procurement, costs and benefits in short food supply chains, training, exchange and dialogue. Through collaboration, it will create tailor-made and practical support tools that integrate the needs of primary producers, consumers and contracting authorities in a hands-on approach, to promote mutually beneficial long-term collaborations.

COACH Objectives..

Beacons: good practice examples in a Living Library

We have invited over thirty good practice case studies from thirteen different countries to share their knowledge and take part in the project’s activities.

These all demonstrate different ways that farmers can access consumer-driven opportunities to improve their incomes and rebalance their position in food chains through collaborative short agri-food chains.  These beacons, as we call them, represent a ‘Living Library’ of information that we hope others will learn from.

More about Beacons..

The CLIP

The Communications, Learning and Innovation Platform (CLIP) is an online space for training and knowledge exchange.

The CLIP will host the training materials that we develop, including the ‘Living Library’ of beacons; a learning module on costs and benefits; multi-media training resources on consumer driven opportunities and smart innovation; short films on COACH spotlights and other resources.

This hub of resources will be updated, not only with project materials but also other materials from consortium partners and other organisations who are working on related issues, beyond the lifetime of the project.

Costs & Benefits

Here, Matteo Mengoni, from the Department of Economics and Management (DISEI) of the University of Florence describes our work to improve the understanding of costs and benefits in collaborative short agri-food supply chains (CSAFCs)

“CSAFCs are likely to generate impacts on the economy, the society and the environment, and to make an important contribution to the sustainability transition of agri-food systems.

Analysing Costs and Benefits of CSAFCs means considering their impacts on the territorial food systems they are embedded in, both at private level (on farmers, producers, consumers, etc.) and at community level (on territories, local communities, landscapes, etc.). For farmers and other actors taking part in CSAFCs, it is important to be aware of the structure of their own costs and revenues, and to understand what the costs and benefits are for them to join a CSAFC instead of selling and/or buying products from traditional longer distribution channels.

Understanding whether a CSAFC initiative is sustainable for the actors involved and for the community and the territory where it takes place, requires looking at the economic, social and environmental costs and benefits generated at the different steps of the value chain.

Notwithstanding, assessing and quantifying costs and benefits of CSAFCs can be a rather difficult task. In fact, CSAFCs are a highly heterogeneous phenomenon, involving very different actors in variegated contexts, often characterised by informal agreements and transactions, and scarce data availability.

At the University of Florence, we are working to build a standardised methodology to quantify economic costs and revenues, and qualitatively assess other economic and non-economic costs and benefits for actors taking part in CSAFCs. At the end of the task, we will condense this experience into a tool and some methodological guidelines available to a wide audience, aimed at supporting CSAFC actors willing to improve their understanding and get some insights about their costs and benefits."

[Photos provided courtesy of GranPrato Association based in Prato (Tuscany, North Italy). In this collaborative wheat-flour-bread supply chain, participants agree to a ‘supply chain pact’ which aims to deliver a fair economic benefit for farmers, miller and bakers, reduced chemical inputs, the recovery of good agronomic practices, an organic orientation and care of the characteristics of the original wheat and traditional bread.]

Spotlights

COACH has 10 ‘spotlight’ themes, which are important cross-cutting topics relating to the scaling up of collaborative short food supply chains. For each spotlight we are holding a series of participatory ‘encounters’ where participants can discuss and debate the issues. Two of these encounters are described below.

Spotlight on Gender Equality in Food Systems

One of the first topics we have focused on is gender equality in food systems. This spotlight showcases practices and approaches that aim to increase gender and social equity in the food system.

During our online encounter, we heard from three inspiring speakers, starting with:

Isa Álvarez (Zambra) [pictured opposite], who spoke about the need to address the issue of unpaid care work (often undertaken by women) and the key role that households play in the food system. Isa highlighted that responsibility for shaping food habits usually lies with women, and that’s why it’s crucial to recognize their significance if we want to transform the whole food system.

Subsequently, Andrea Vaz-König (City of Vienna), explained to us why the kitchen is a political space. Andrea inspired participants to reflect on why there is high participation of female chefs in public kitchens while men continue to dominate the scene of prestigious restaurants and why it must change.

Finally, Amets Ladislao (Etxaldeko Emakumeak) explained how women’s presence in food systems leads to more sustainable solutions and why it’s crucial to emancipate women in rural areas. Amets shared with us some insights on how reducing working hours to the equivalent of a regular workday enables a better work-family life balance, while it contributes to engaging more people in agriculture and results in improving living conditions for everyone.

Spotlight on Policy and Advocacy

In this spotlight we examine approaches, strategies and proposals for triggering policy change at different scales to create an enabling environment for collaborative food initiatives in territories, ensuring conditions for the meaningful participation of people and groups most impacted by policies and food systems issues.

At our first online encounter to develop this spotlight, the participants debated:

Possible incentives for producers to join markets
Strategies on approaching policy makers who support small farmers and how to trigger a policy change by engaging in already existing projects
The performance-based criterium for procurement
The farmers’ perspective on policymaking

We also heard from Reeta Huomo (City of Helsinki) who shared insights on the municipality’s involvement in the circular and sharing economy, and its plan to eliminate carbon emissions. Peter Defranceschi (ICLEI Europe) showed us that advocating for sustainable food procurement is a goal within reach and that it is possible to provide healthy meals with no additional costs.

Events and Training

Within the project, we will organise a number of national and international events, from multi-actor dialogues and training sessions, to knowledge exchanges and dissemination events.

These events look to bring new actors together, share information and knowledge and build capacity to truly build fairer, more sustainable food systems.

Multi-Actor Dialogues

Our very first multi-actor dialogue was hosted (online) in the City of Copenhagen in May 2021. The event was attended by public sector procurement specialists and local producers.

The first part focused on the opportunities for farm-to-fork procurement involving local and regional small and medium enterprises with a fascinating range of speakers presenting perspectives from the FAO Urban Food Agenda, the Danish Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries and the City of Milan. The second part moved into a ‘market dialogue’ between local and national scale actors, to discuss opportunities for upcoming tenders on farm to fork procurement of regionally grown potatoes.

The City of Copenhagen is building on this work to develop an international workshop and training materials on smart innovation, a ‘spotlight’ on public procurement and is also supporting the development of a ‘farm to fork’ procurement toolkit, being led by ICLEI.

Multi-Actor Dialogues..

Who's involved in COACH?

The COACH consortium includes 8 project partners and 12 members (affiliated/linked third parties) of those organisations.

We also have close relationships with Associate Partners and also the related projects funded under the same H2020 initiative (RUR-05 Connecting Consumers and Producers in Innovative Agri-food Supply Chains) projects: AgroBRIDGES and COCOREADO with whom we share common goals and objectives.

COACH Consortium..