CREDA participates in a project to improve the contribution of GI to food systems

  • GI SMART is driven by the Horizon Europe program of the European Commission and aims to develop recommendations and policies that improve the understanding and perception of Geographical Indications in the Farm to Fork strategy
  • For Bouali Guesmi, representative of CREDA’s participation in the project, “the initiative will build a professional network to support research in the sustainability assessment field”

June 18, 2024

The Centre de Recerca en Economia i Desenvolupament Agroalimentari (CREDA) participates in the GI SMART project, an initiative that aims to explore new avenues and collect a series of evidence-based recommendations that can strengthen the contribution of the Geographical Indications (GI) system to sustainable agriculture and food Systems. The project, which starts this June 2024, has the support of the European Commission through the Horizon Europe research aid program.

GI SMART has three main objectives: (1) to improve the understanding of the contribution of systems to sustainable development; (2) to improve the perception of the sustainability attributes of applied GI Systems; and (3) to design and implement better and smarter policies that foster the provision of sustainable agriculture and fisheries services, diets and healthy and sustainable food systems.

Bouali Guesmi, PhD in Agricultural Economics, is a CREDA participant in this project. For him, “GI SMART is an initiative that, in addition to contributing to scientific knowledge and policy development, will also build a strong professional network to support research in the sustainability assessment field“. Through actions such as the generation of baseline information, assessment tools, maps or even KPIs databases, “it will be possible to guide European policymakers to make decisions based on the promotion of sustainable production practices“.

According to Guesmi, the work developed by the Catalan centre “will contribute to the definition of a methodology and a set of indicators that will facilitate the economic, social, environmental and governance assessment of the sustainability of GIs products“. In addition, CREDA is leading a task through which pilot test methods will be developed in seven countries “to understand consumers’ perceptions of GIs, and what strategies will increase demand and willingness to pay“.

Currently, Europe has a total of 3.626 quality indications (PDO, PGI and TSG). These are a series of labels that determine and guarantee the quality and reputation of a product according to the region of origin. With the collaboration of partner entities from several countries, GI SMART will work to strengthen the contribution of these GIs to the Farm to Fork strategy of the European Union, through a dynamic perspective that encompasses four dimensions: environmental, economic, social and governance. In addition, it will be divided into a total of 16 work packages, and CREDA will participate in 12 of these.

Among the main ambitions of GI SMART is the drafting of strategic guides that can be applied both in the field of production and commercialization, as well as in the formulation of policies, in order to ensure a better sustainability of GIs. On the other hand, the project wants to develop a multi-stakeholder online platform that allows the exchange of knowledge between the different partners participating in the project.

GI SMART is led by INRAE ​​- Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environment (France) and has a total of 17 partner entities from 10 countries: Germany, Belgium, Spain, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, United Kingdom and Switzerland. CREDA (Castelldefels) is the only entity that represents Spain.