Innovations for soil, food and environment

The food industry is Sweden's third largest industry and has the potential to become an innovative growth engine that both generates jobs and contributes to a sustainable transition. This pilot study will investigate the conditions for the Uppsala Region to develop an innovation platform where business promoters, academia, industry and the public sector can meet to develop the food chain's innovation capacity together.

The pilot study is led by the research institute RISE, Department for Agriculture and Food, in collaboration with SLU and SLU Holding and is carried out with a focus on the green industries and sustainable food supply as well as companies in the tech industry that want to approach the green industries.

The pilot study is divided into four work packages (WP) that will:

1. Learn from how successful testbeds in other industries have been scaled up to improve data availability for SMEs who want to develop new products and services and investigate how this can be applied to existing test environments within the food chain, such as Testbed Digitized Agriculture at RISE and GigaCow at SLU
2. Investigate development needs in regard to digitalisation of public activities in the food supply chain for increased efficiency and innovation in the industry
3. Investigate SMF's needs; in green digital skills industries, in tech and other relevant industries of access to data from or for green industries, and potential for innovation for a digital and green transition linked to these needs
4. Identify effective forms of collaboration within the regional innovation support system to better take advantage of existing test environments and meet the needs of industry and public agencies to achieve a digital and green transition

The target group of public agencies that support this pilot study consists of the Swedish Food Agency and the National Veterinary Institute (SVA). The County Administrative Board is also a target group for the project. RISE is working closely with the Swedish Board of Agriculture in another project that investigates how data can be shared in a safe and legal way (Agrifood Data Workshop) where synergies can be achieved for the relevant authorities in this feasibility study. The target group SME is partly companies active in the green industries (excluding primary producers), partly suppliers of equipment, materials and systems for the green industries and tech companies that today do not target the green industries, but which have the potential to do so.