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The general objective of LOWINFOOD is to co-design, together with actors of the food chain, low-waste value chains by supporting the demonstration of a portfolio of innovations in the fruits & vegetables, bakery products and fish value chains as well as in a-home and out-of-home consumption. Besides, the LOWINFOOD project wants to provide the demonstration and scale-up necessary to enable replication on the market. The main activities of the project are all focused on assessing the effectiveness of these innovations in reducing food loss and waste. The impact of the innovations will be assessed in terms of the amount of food waste avoided, as well as in environmental and socio-economic terms.

The LOWINFOOD consortium gathers over than 27 institutions from 12 European countries (details below) covering a broad range actor (star-up, SME association, hotel, non-profit association, public institutions, SME, university/research, non-profit research organizations & foundations). The H2020 project will run for the next 5 years and is expected to deliver its results in early 2025.

As a consortium member, AREFLH will be tasked with Innovations against loss of fruit & vegetables and with communicating and disseminating information related to this project.

The Lowinfood consortium

The Lowinfood consortium includes 9 research partners, 8 start-ups and companies providing the innovations, 7 companies and associations working in the food sector, 2 public institutions and 1 partner dedicated to communications and dissemination.

Research partners:  

• Università degli Studi della Tuscia (Coordinator), Italy

• Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, Italy

• Sveriges Lantbruksuniversitet, Sweden

• Fachhochschule Munster, Germany

• The James Hutton Institute, UK

• Universität für Bodenkultur Wien, Austria

• Tamperen Korkeakoulusaatio SR, Finland

• Harokopio University, Greece

• Österreichisches Ökologie-Institut, Austria

Partners providing innovations:

• Matomatic AB, Sweden

• Foresightee BV, Belgium

• Leroma GmbH, Germany

• Mitakus analytics UG, Germany

• Kitro SA, Switzerland

• CogZum Bulgaria OOD, Bulgaria

• Recuperiamo srl, Italy

• Antegon GmbH (FoodTracks), Germany

Partners belonging to food sectors:

• Unverschwendet GmbH, Austria

• Akademie Deutsches Bäckerhandwerk Nord GmbH, Germany

• Pianeta Cospea srl, Italy

• CNA Associazione di Viterbo e Civitavecchia, Italy

• Assemblée des Régions Europeéennes Fruitiéres, Légumières et Horticoles, France

• L.V.L.AE Blue Meltemi Hotel and Spa, Greece

• Iridanos Inambelos SA Thalassa Hotel, Greece

Public institutions

• Regione Emilia-Romagna, Italy
• Uppsala Kommun, Sweden

Related articles in AREFLH website 

• Find all related articles by clicking here

• Low in Food : innovations to prevent food waste

• Low in Food has set its specific work flow

• Participation to the European Association of Agricultural Economists seminar on 9-10 September 2021

• CozZo app in LOWINFOOD : foodwaste innovation within the house

• General Project Meeting of LOWINFOOD (Feb 2022)

• The Lowinfood project reaches italian supermarkets

• Climate change impact of bread transport in Sweden

• Regusto, an Italian mobile app to redistribute restaurant excess food

• Climate change impact of bread transport in Sweden (March 2023)

• The Lowinfood project has been included in the EU's Innovation Radar platform (April 2023)

• In-depth analysis of food waste components in Sweden

Know more about the project

• lowinfood.eu
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Kick-off meeting in 2020

The kick-off meeting of the LOWINFOOD project (Low-waste Food value chains through the demonstration of INnovative solutions to reduce FOOD loss and Waste) took place on the 2nd & 3rd of December 2020 in an online meeting, due to the Covid-19 pandemic situation. AREFLH as a partner of this project participated in the online meetings.

The kick-off meeting was the opportunity for the project partner to meet each other and discuss the overall project strategy. The project Officer from REA (Research Executive Agency of the European Commission) and a representative of DG AGRI Research and Innovation Unit. Work package leaders and co-leaders also presented their planned activities and fine-tune management approaches and duties.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No.101000439

For a precise and water-saving irrigation : the INTERREG SUDOE project

Dates of the programme : january 2007 - June 2008

On January 11th, 2007, an INTERREG SUDOE project (for European interregional project in the Southwest of Europe) was accepted by Europe.

For horticulture, it is a question of favoring on one hand a more precise piloting, on the other hand of introducing into the reflection, the notion of irrigation of precision (eg.: to determine the choice criteria choice in the area(s) of piloting on a plot of land - a watering unit - in case of heterogeneousness, so frequent in these cultures). So, the project consisted in sharing the various experiences and the piloting methods at the end of the irrigation, between the various regions and organizations.

Indeed, the SUDOE area has a great extent of irrigated agricultural land completely dependent on abundant and high-quality water resources, specially where the main crops produced are fruits and vegetables. However, irrigated agriculture is often accused not only of wasting a limited water resource, but also of being a source of diffuse pollution damage. With the purpose of finding common solutions to these problems, the project partners have joined to share technical knowledge and to experiment on new management systems for agriculture water resources.

The objective of the Precirieg partnership was to foster a quick and safe evolution of models and tools for irrigation control and their strategies of use.

For this, the partners developed a series of actions aiming to:

• draw up an assessment of the experimental protocols used by the different partners;
• create new tools and methods for irrigation management
• test these newly defined measuring tools;
• evaluate the impact of the chosen tools and methods through pilot actions on farms.

This short project took place over 18 months, from January 2007 to the end of June 2008. It brought together ten partners, research centers and agricultural technical centers, Spanish, Portuguese and French South-West and Languedoc-Roussillon, the coordination being provided by the AREFLH.

The participants were the following organisations:

• ACMG, Association Climatologique de la Moyenne-Garonne et du Sud-Ouest
  
• Cemagref (FR), Institut de recherche pour l'ingénierie de l'agriculture et de l'environnement
  
• INVENIO (HORTIS Aquitaine) (FR)
  
• CIREA, Centre Inter-Régional d'Expérimentation Arboricole (FR)
  
• ANPN, Association Nationale des Producteurs de Noisettes (FR)
  
• IRTA (Barcelone), Institut de Recherche et Technologie Agroalimentaires (ES)
  
• IVIA (Valencia),  Institut Valencien de Recherche Agronomique
  
• IMIDA, Institut Murcien de Recherche et Développement Agraire et Alimentaire, Conseil de l'Agriculture, l'Eau et l'Environnement
  
• ISA, Institut Supérieur d'Agronomie - Université Technique de Lisbonne (P).

The first results of this survey and the experimental results were shared in Lisbon in November, 2007. Afterward, and until June, 2008, the results were drawn up as useful documents in the practice. The information was also shared by means of meetings organized within the various regions, with the horticulturalists and with their technicians, to restore the various results and inform about the methods and the most successful decision-making tools or corresponding at best to the expectations and the constraints.

This project was presented by Carole Isbérie, Cemagref UMR G-EAU, Water Management, Actors, Manners.

For futher information: AREFLH's presentation