In line with the new CAP post2020, the F2F Strategy and the Green Deal, the EU4Advice Project will develop enabling methodologies and tools to connect short food supply chains (SFSCs) advisors in a common network with the aim of fostering the upscaling of consumer-producer chains across Europe. SFSCs are a mean for producers to increase their bargaining power and to improve their position within the value chain and for consumers to increase trust, transparency, quality and safety of their food. Political and socio-economic barriers and gaps need to be addressed in order to enhance the scope of consumer-producer chains across Europe and EU4Advice will provide the necessary tools to the relevant stakeholders to overcome them. One key challenge to achieve this goal is to improve national AKIS by implementing new governance models that facilitates the integration of SFSCs advisory services Through a multi-actor approach involving advisors, policy makers, researchers, farmers and consumers, and by implementing a living lab methodology, EU4Advice will create the foundations for the establishment of a network of SFSC-advisors across Europe that will be appropriately structured and connected to a diversity of stakeholders within the national AKIS. The development of networking tools, contents for SFSCs advisors, a tailored dissemination, communication and exploitation strategy, and impact assessment plans will create the appropriate ecosystem for the effective transfer of knowledge among stakeholders in the 27 EU members. Based on previous key related multi-actor projects, EU4Advice will apply the “GAIN transition model” to guide the successful implementation of the multi-actor network through different administrative levels: local, regional, national and European. EU4Advice will establish appropriate channels for collaboration and knowledge exchange among a selected group of multi-actor projects, thematic networks and focus groups at EU level, to ensure a long term impact

SMARTCHAIN is an ambitious, 3 year project with 43 partners from 11 European countries including key stakeholders from the domain of short food supply chain as actors in the project. The central objective is to foster and accelerate the shift towards collaborative short food supply chains and, through concrete actions and recommendations, to introduce new robust business models and innovative practical solutions that enhance the competitiveness and sustainability of the European agri-food system. Using bottom-up, demand-driven research, the SMARTCHAIN consortium i) will perform a multi-perspective analysis of 18 case studies of short food supply chains in terms of technological, regulatory, social, economic and environmental factors, ii) will assess the linkages and interactions among all stakeholders involved in short food supply chains and iii) will identify the key parameters that influence sustainable food production and rural development among different regions in Europe. The project aims to establish 9 national communities of short food supply chains (Innovation and Collaboration Hubs) in different partner countries (France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Serbia, Spain and Switzerland) and a virtual innovation hub in order to facilitate stakeholder engagement, bringing farmers and consumers together in a trust-enhancing environment enabling them to generate demand driven-innovations. Combination of scientific and practical knowledge and the use of innovation workshops will enable the development of practical innovative solutions as well as the promotion of a framework for different forms of collaborative short food supply chains in urban and rural areas. SMARTCHAIN will generate concrete actions for knowledge transfer, through the organisation of multi-stakeholder workshops and training activities for farmers and short food supply chain entrepreneurs.