Mar 7, 2023
The FOOD FACTORY-4-US 2023, supported by the FAIRCHAIN project, gives students in food science the opportunity to submit a project aimed at innovating in existing short food supply chains to make them stronger and more competitive.
Projects must identify a specific challenge/problem in an existing short food supply chain and develop an exploitable solution to that challenge/problem. The aim is to improve the competitiveness of the SFSC in a way that maintains or improves resource efficiency and is climate-friendly, while also leading to the growth of the SFSC towards an intermediate food supply chain. The innovative and exploitable solution proposed may address an economic, social, organizational or technological challenge in the existing SFSC and should be potentially applicable to other SFSCs in other regions. Examples could be anywhere in the value chain including raw materials through processing, packaging, logistics and marketing.
Students taking part in the competition are also expected to take part in an online training programme and a virtual final conference between April and June 2023.
Further details about this year’s edition can be found on ISEKI-Food Association’s website. You may also read our article about the results of the 2022 edition.
Contact: foodfactory4us@iseki-food.net
DOWNLOAD THE COMPETITION LEAFLET
Feb 12, 2023
FAIRCHAIN participated in the FRUIT LOGISTICA fair, which took place in Berlin from 8 to 10 February. It is one of the biggest fairs in Europe that covers every sector of the fresh produce business and provides a complete picture of the latest innovations in the international supply chain. Our project partner, Confagricoltura, presented the Swiss case study, which deals with the valorisation of apple pomaces and apricot pits. Check out the case study flyer here.
Jan 10, 2023
The most recent edition of the FoodFactory-4-Us student competition, organised by ISEKI-Food Association within the FAIRCHAIN project, challenged teams of students to design projects for the modernization of a traditional food that could contribute to the development of regional food value chains. Quinoa, octopus, algae, Dadih, fermented shrimp, Porto sauce, Meitauza and “pan de muerto” were some of the local specialties upon which teams from around the world based their entries. The winning project, submitted by team “Nutrimento” from the University of Agriculture of Faisalabad (Pakistan), uses local grains and fruits to make an instant cereal high in nutritional value and low in cost to consumers. See the LinkedIn post about the winners here. The winners received a cash prize sponsored by ISEKI and will join the FAIRCHAIN Food Hack 2023, organised by another FAIRCHAIN partner, Research Institutes of Sweden (RISE). To know more about the competition visit this page.
Dec 1, 2022
The recording of the webinar “Food Packaging – is it just for protection or is there more to it?” delivered during the 2020 ILSI Europe Congress is now available online. FAIRCHAIN partners at Pack4Food / University of Ghent gave a presentation entitled “Balance between functionality, convenience and sustainability of food packaging”.
Nov 7, 2022
After two successful co-creation workshops – the goal-defining workshop in June 2021 and the implementation workshop in January 2022 – and an intense design and implementation period, the first version of the ICT platform for trustworthy traceability information on Feta cheese production is available.
Information from key phases, including milk collection, milk mixing and cheese processing operations is captured using the ICT system and registered in Blockchain. Blockchain, an innovative technology being piloted in food industry, allows for immutability and integrity of the information.
The usage of Blockchain, as a decentralized ledger, presents technological and organizational challenges, e.g. related to data volumes that can be handled. The combined usage of private (project – based) and public (Ethereum testnet) along with optimized data management and coding techniques employed in the case study, contribute to its smooth usage.
The case study is well aligned with the tectonic changes in the Ethereum landscape in terms of consensus algorithms. The Merge, executed on September 15, 2022, completed Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake consensus, officially deprecating proof-of-work and reducing energy consumption by ~99.95%.
The case study’s ‘smart contracts’ (i.e. computerized rules executed in Blockchain verifying that the operational parameters comply with the legislation framework and best practices) are PoS compliant, while we are currently migrating from Ropsten testnet to the new recommended testnet Goerli.
Stay tuned, as in the coming months the platform will be further enhanced and piloted.
Text and image contributed by Andreas Papadakis –
Nov 3, 2022
Today, the forest berry value chain is long and international. Local berry picking and processing have almost disappeared and have instead been replaced by foreign berry pickers in collaboration with large wholesalers. There is a national market for forest berries, but to get this value chain to develop further we need to tackle a series of challenges.
To show that the berry industry can change, FAIRCHAIN has developed a special app. The app was developed by RISE to be used for mapping berry fields and, via digital models made by SLU, we can help berry pickers predict which areas have a high yield of berries.
During the first part of 2022, FAIRCHAIN also devoted itself to finding partners who want to do tests with picking, cleaning and selling berries, in a new concept that we call “Bär-i-bygden” (Berries in the Village). The purpose of Bär-i-Bygden is to engage with the local population in Bjurholm, a small municipality in northern Sweden. The idea is to use Bjurholm as a kind of geographically limited demo site to test how we can create co-learning and engagement around berries. In September, we organized a berry festival in Bjurholm.
The aim was to get more people to see the possibilities with our wild berries, to create more cooperation in the area and, in this way, bring more creative product development around berries and berry processing. Over 400 people participated in the event.
Text and Image contributed by Alexander Walhberg, RISE
