The project “EATingCRAFT – Education Towards the Creation of Alternative Food Networks” is built on a strategic partnership between 7 European organisations involved in sustainable food production and consumption. The partners are IFOAM – Organics International (Germany), Nature et Progrès (France), the Association of Conscious Consumers – ACC-TVE (Hungary) PRO-BIO Liga (Czech Republic), MIRAMAP (France), Agroecopolis (Greece) and the International CSA Network URGENCI (based in France). The project objective is to design an innovative and high-quality training program aiming at up-skilling adult learners interested in building alternative food networks. We will assure the dissemination and the accessibility of the results to various stakeholders by building capacity for staff and multipliers and making the training program freely accessible through the project website. The focus is on Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) and its synergies with CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) initiatives. PGS are a locally quality assurance system, alternative to third party certification where producers and consumer certify the production through a participative methodology. PGS offer a complementary method to third-party certification; they are low-cost, locally-based system of certification, with a strong emphasis on social control and knowledge building. This type of initiatives could have many synergies with other short value chain activities such as Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), which are as well a successful and growing model that provides a way to maintain and develop small-scale farming and achieve local food sovereignty. The partners implementing the program have great experience working with CSA and PGS. During the initial conception of the project, partners assessed the frequency and quality of educational programmes focusing on PGS in their countries. The mapping showed that, even though PGS are implemented in at least 5 countries in the EU and some PGS workshops have been carried out ad-hoc, no comprehensive education initiative addressing the needs of adult learners in this field is currently available. Through this training program adult learners will gain theoretical and applied knowledge about sustainable agriculture, guarantee systems and stakeholder involvement. Competence enhancement will happen within the natural living and learning environment of participants allowing for adults with different backgrounds to access high-quality learning opportunities, regardless of previous experiences. To target social inclusion and improve access for disadvantaged learners, the project is reaching out specifically for participants from vulnerable groups, such as small-scale farmers who are based in less favored areas, experiencing social exclusion and weak market access due to lack of entrepreneurial skills. Other key targets groups are facilitators belonging to community groups and grassroots organizations, educators, decision makers, certifiers, researchers and students. Our project follows the Erasmus+ priorities by developing an innovative training program of 4 modules (1. Introducing PGS; 2. Interaction between PGS and CSA; 3. Start, build and maintain PGS; 4. Strategies for peer learning and knowledge sharing) and a comprehensive interactive toolkit for adult learners. The modularity is an essential feature: it allows flexible participation for individual learners, free pass between modules and the combination of contents. Each module will be then tested during multiplier events implemented in Hungary, Czech republic and Greece (E1-E12), since one of the objectives of the project is to promote dissemination and adaptation of the training materials to local situations. Upon completion of the project, stakeholders will have acquired knowledge on PGS and will be motivated to work together to implement PGS and similar initiatives. At political and academic level, growing attention will be given to participatory system bringing increasing recognition of PGS at institutional level. Thanks to a staff-training event, staff members will improve their skill and competences, bringing new inputs and capacity within their organizations and networks, building stronger partnerships and extending their networks at international level. The project will therefore contribute to enhance knowledge on PGS and to spread the implementation of sustainable short value chain activities based on participatory approaches. Through this virtuous initiatives, rural communities will be empowered ensuring better livelihood for farmers and local business, improved and high quality access to food for local communities and meaningful relationships among citizens and institutions
There is broad consensus that the way we produce and consume our food urgently needs to change in order to deliver on the sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Agenda 2030 and address global challenges including climate change, biodiversity loss, poverty, and deteriorating health. But overall the central question still remains: how to make food systems more sustainable? The Education Towards the Creation of Alternative Food Networks project (EATingCRAFT) tries to address this question by designing an innovative and high-quality training programme focusing on up-skilling adult learners interested in building alternative food networks which ensure benefits for their local communities. Around the globe, organic farmers, consumers and facilitating organisations have been developing different innovations aiming at building local food systems based on solidarity and participation such as Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) initiatives. PGS and CSA are similar in their overall objectives of improving livelihoods of organic producers and increasing access to safe and nutritious food for consumers. Both PGS and CSA enhance transparent and shared decision-making processes, prioritizings a solidarity-based approach where the responsibilities for implementing sustainable agriculture practices are shared by the community. Funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union, the project is built on a strategic partnership between seven European organisations involved in sustainable food production and consumption. The partners are IFOAM – Organics International (global), Nature et Progrès (France), the Association of Conscious Consumers – ACC-TVE (Hungary) PRO-BIO Liga (Czech Republic), MIRAMAP (France), Agroecopolis (Greece) and the International CSA Network URGENCI. The 2-year project (2017-2019) has produced a training programme on PGS and synergies with CSA articulated in 4 modules, along with a toolkit is published online on the project’s website. Each module was tested in three European countries: Czech Republic, Hungary and Greece. The project has been successful in creating in these country the tools and the capacity necessary to set up pilot PGS initiatives. During this project, partner organisations have researched the synergies between PGS and CSA systems. On one side, we discovered that PGS can contribute to the CSA approach in many ways, especially by offering a system to ensure quality and a continued improvement of practices. On the other side, we will showcase examples of how CSA can inspire PGS in building a robust solidarity economy and cultivate relationships between producers and consumers creating string and heathy local food systems. This project is also an opportunity to create a network of European PGS initiatives and likeminded organisations, which can learn and share local experiences and challenges at international level.