New Skills for new Jobs in Peri­urban Agriculture

In the public agenda, food is no more considered just as a commodity or as a nutritional necessity; it is an emerging multidimensional policy challenge, which crosses ecological, social, economic and spatial dimensions. A sustainable and integrated urban approach is needed to deal with the main issues that must be addressed: an inclusive, coherent and reflexive urban­rural food governance system; a more solid social and physical infrastructure to reduce the distance between producers and consumers, and to promote circular economy; reliable markets for quality food producers, resulting in new opportunities for SMEs development; the need for experimenting new forms of entrepreneurship in the agricultural sector, and for creating new jobs and skills. At the core of the project there is an “Open Innovation Hub on Peri­Urban Agriculture” as an integrated strategy to deliver innovation in existing and newly created nodes of the agri­food value chain, focusing on new skills, training, pilot projects for SMEs and startups ideas. The project will result in improved interactions between traditional knowledge holders and other more innovative actors between local and city­wide realities engaged in product, services or process innovation. It is also expected to foster cross­sector linkages and hybridization between different fields (agriculture, food industry, culture, education…) and actors (SMEs, NGO, PA) with the ultimate aim of testing an innovation­driven inclusive growth model.