Launch EU4Advice Living Lab Dutch short food chains a big success

On Monday, Oct. 9, the launch of the Dutch EU4Advice Living Lab for short chains took place at The Natural Pavilion of the Flevo Campus in Almere.

HRH Prince Carlos de Bourbon de Parme opened the Living Lab and highlighted the important role that regional food chains have fulfilled in the past and can and should do so again now. Participants then explored in four breakout sessions the key opportunities and bottlenecks retrieved in the June 20 inspiration session around four specific issues:

• Agriculture for Consumers: How do you transfer consumer needs to farms?
• Blended Finance: How do we finance short-chain development?
• Market Creation: How can we bundle markets?
• Cooperation between short chains: How do you envision this?

This Living Lab runs for 4 years and is designed to offer entrepreneurs, experts, administrators and other stakeholders access to knowledge, tools, experiences and concrete projects to build a robust, regional and regenerative food system and thereby guide future European policy for short food chains.

The Dutch EU4Advice Living Lab (2023-2026) is a collaboration of Wageningen University, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions, Province of Flevoland and Amped and is supported by the EU Horizon 2020 project COREnet. The Living Lab actively collaborates with various development programs and organizations, including COREnet, VU Amsterdam Athena Institute, FoodCLIC and Short Chain Collective Netherlands.

We would like to thank Stephanie Jongma and Lucie Jeandrain for organizing the meeting, Evi for the clear moderation, the breakout leaders Alexander Laarman, Ellen Tijkotte, Margriet Goris and Mark Frederiks, and of course all participants for this successful kickoff of the Dutch EU4Advice Living Lab!

Would you like to stay informed about this project? Then become a member of the Short Food Chain EU Community on LinkedIn.