GourMed - Sustainability assessment of Mediterranean supply chains based on selected case studies

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The collaborative project GourMed conducts research with the aim of further developing food supply in the Mediterranean region and making it more effective, cost-efficient and sustainable. To this end, optimised and innovative governance and business models are being developed that ensure food quality, profitability and sustainability of Mediterranean agricultural and food supply chains and increase value creation, especially compared to imports of highly industrialized products by large global retailers offered a low price on local markets. The sustainability assessment considers the entire supply chain from local/regional agricultural production to the production and distribution of food to the point of sale.

Focus on value creation, fair revenue distribution and competitiveness of small producers

The individual objectives are, on the one hand, the analysis of value creation and the identification of approaches for fair revenue distribution in small-scale food value chains (focus on smaller agricultural and food producers). From this, a strategy for implementation will be developed to increase the competitiveness of Mediterranean agri-food value chains. As a result, alternative business models and optimised operating models are proposed, including analytical methods to identify the origin, safety, authenticity and typicality of Mediterranean food.Pilot projects show how this works in practice: Six case studies of Mediterranean food products and their supply chains are being examined. These include, for example, the cultivation of industrial tomatoes in Algeria or traditional local foods from Tunisia.
The results of these pilot projects are incorporated into partly IT-based tools that can in principle be transferred to the entire Mediterranean region. To support this, accompanying training and further education activities are also planned in cooperation with the project partners from seven countries. GourMed thus implicitly contributes to an intensification of scientific and technological cooperation with the Mediterranean region.

Funding Initiative Partnership for Research and Innovation in the Mediterranean Area

19 countries of the European Union and the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean have joined forces in the initiative "Partnership for Research and Innovation in the Mediterranean Area", in short "PRIMA". Together with the European Union, they are providing almost 500 million euros over the next ten years. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is contributing 20 million euros to the funding initiative.