Driving Transformation in Agri-Food through new metrics and reinforced partnerships

On December 11th and 12th, Rimini, Italy, hosted the Smart Specialisation (S3) Conference 2024, a landmark forum organised by the European Commission's DG REGIO and the S3CoP Secretariat. With over 500 attendees, the Conference provided a crucial platform for discussing the future of regional development in Europe.

During a session dedicated to Agri-food S3 Interregional Partnerships, I had the opportunity to highlight several key aspects that, in my opinion, are essential for advancing the outward dimension of Smart Specialisation and its support for sustainable value chains. These included: strengthening regional S3-innovation ecosystems and connecting them to interregional/global networks to scale local innovations and address broader challenges (in this regard, the Interregional Innovation Instrument I3 has an interesting role to play); adopting systemic thinking as a foundational approach for designing and implementing effective actions within the different sectors; implementing continuous horizon scanning and scenario planning to enable informed decision-making in a rapidly changing environment; and establishing new metrics for growth and competitiveness that go beyond traditional economic indicators, capturing public good, equity, and environmental protection.

In the case of agri-food, compelling evidence confirms the urgent need to transform the whole sector for long-term sustainability and social well-being. Traditional indicators, such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP), have proven inadequate for measuring genuine progress, as they fail to account for critical factors like rural communities’ prosperity, soil health, and food security. Global initiatives like “Beyond GDP” are driving the development of more comprehensive indicators that reflect sustainability and equitable outcomes. Therefore, it is now essential for the agri-food sector to include new Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) among those typically used to measure progress and competitiveness, in order to drive the essential transformation towards sustainability. These new KPIs may include assessing long-term soil health, focusing on capacity for crop productivity, reduced chemical inputs, and carbon sequestration through ecosystem services; evaluating social cohesion, including access to healthcare, education, cultural heritage, and the promotion of community development; measuring food security, nutritional quality, and access, particularly for vulnerable populations; considering ethical animal treatment and antibiotic use in animal welfare and ethical production; evaluating water efficiency, conservation practices, and pollution reduction in sustainable water management; and assessing proper food storage and leftover usage.

Recognising that innovation is inherently relational, it is crucial to complement these KPIs with robust public-private alliances and effective inter-territorial coordination mechanisms to accelerate transformative shifts within the agri-food value chain. Interregional networks have a key role to play in this framework. But a trustworthy partnership cannot be instantly created, it has to grow. This is why existing S3 interregional innovation Agri-food partnerships offer significant value to these processes. They possess the expertise and mission to connect, across territories and sectors, diverse actors and innovative solutions that can really make a change. And what makes them uniquely special is that, by being anchored in place-based strategies, they have the potential to integrate transformative actions within the rich variety of regional realities across the EU.

A real opportunity for impact.