Summing up the FC4EU Monitoring Board in Sofia

The Board Meeting was opened by Mr. Jan Nico Appelman, Vice Commissioner of the King, Province of Flevoland.
Mrs. Sarah Nietiedt – the FoodChains 4 EU Project Manager presented overall project objectives, main project activities, budget, reporting as well as the members of project Management team and Monitoring Board.
The project partners presented their regions, the challenges they are facing in boosting innovation in the food chain and their expectations from the project. The first Monitoring Board Meeting was used for the start of FoodChains 4 EU partner cooperation symbolized through a puzzle with nine pieces (one per partner).
As main expectation from the project the partners outlined:
-Informing and influence regional policy – include ‘food’ in the partner regions’ strategies or support the development of a regional food policy
-Be a catalyst for change – engage and bring together partners to discuss changes across the supply chain
-Communicating opportunities – help communicate best practice across the regions and provide a platform for scaling up successful initiatives
-Piloting innovation – trial scalable innovation across the food supply train e.g. around food enterprise
-Academic reviews – understanding successful innovation across partner regions
Mrs Andonova, the FoodChains 4 EU Peer Review coordinator presented the Methodology for the reviews – 5 in total planned during the project implementation. Important for the quality of the Peer Reviews will be to have a good guideline and harmonized templates for preparation and reporting of the reviews. There will be also one page of “DO and DON’T” in the Peer Review Methodology to avoid repetition of bad practices.