The Greek RUMORE pilot action partners DEMETER, Regional Development Fund of Central Macedonia on behalf of the Region of Central Macedonia (RDFCM), and CERTH have published intermediary results for their steps “Stakeholders’ identification and requirements collection” as well as “Pilot specifications, design, and planning”. You can find the document in the library here.
This deliverable constitutes a major step forward to achieve the aims to test the development of a Digital Innovation Hub in the Agri-food sector, through a field research and a digital application in the rice value chain. Blockchain technology offers the benefit to securely record distributed transactions among different untrusted parties. This is a key element in agriculture and food supply chains, such is rice one, where numerous actors are involved from the raw production to the supermarket shelves.
The task “stakeholders´ identification and requirements collection” involved the identification of stakeholders along with the collection of their requirements using DEMETER’s and RDFCM networks. All surveys were conducted in Greek language by contacts with 20 regional actors (stakeholders-farmers), 3 rice milling industry actors and 5 strategic roadmap questionnaires. A brief overview of the surveys shows that most of the participants were males, aged from 41 to 60 years old. Participants have access to the internet and 80% of them own smartphones, while 70% of them use mobile data. Their paddies’ soil for the most part ranged from sandy to sandy-loam and the size of their pilot dedicated fields vary from 1.5 ha to more than 4.0 ha, while 40% have AGRO certification.
Moreover, the task “pilot specifications, design, and planning” involved the collection of data from the rice sector derived by the stakeholders and end-users and how the last ones were identified. Thus, due to the similar nature of the two tasks the two deliverables were reported as one combined deliverable. The strategic pilot network started developing from the kick-off meeting (20/7/2020) and continued by the identification of the Key Actor, “Agricultural Association of Chalastra A’, one of the biggest vertical associations in Greece, owning storages, air dry facility, trading, packaging, and retailing (supermarkets). Furthermore, pilot actions were strategically planned, organized, and decided, until the end of the project. Finally, the key actor facilitated and ensured the collection of 10 tons of paddy rice of the variety “GLORIA” dedicated to RUMORE pilot, delivered by 10 rice growers, members of the association covering rice lands of more than 200 ha each. These rice growers become the core participants of the pilot for the 2020, while the RUMORE’s consortium will ensure their participation of the pilot activities in 2021.
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