Small-scale food producers and food SMEs in Northern Sweden and Finland are facing increasing pressure from high logistics costs, small markets, limited resources for innovation and marketing, and growing competition from imported food. At the same time, these businesses play an important role in regional food self-sufficiency, local economies and northern food culture.
The Interreg Aurora funded project Farm2Future North aims to strengthen the competitiveness, profitability and resilience of small-scale food producers and SMEs across the Aurora programme area. Building on existing knowledge, the project focuses on turning identified challenges into practical business opportunities together with the businesses themselves.
Through cross-border cooperation between Sweden and Finland, the project will bring together food SMEs, researchers, designers, students and regional stakeholders. Design-driven and participatory methods will be used to co-create, test and demonstrate practical solutions in real SME settings. The solutions may address areas such as value addition, reducing food losses and using side streams, improving visibility and marketing, strengthening direct-to-consumer sales, developing collaborative approaches and creating more sustainable and resilient business models.
A central result will be Challenge-to-Opportunity Transformation Models, showing how specific challenges can be transformed into practical and replicable business opportunities.
The project will also establish a Challenge-to-Opportunity Hub, an open digital platform where SMEs and other stakeholders can access case studies, transformation models, practical tools, experiences and opportunities for future collaboration.
Contact
Anna Öhrwall Rönnbäck, Luleå tekniska universitet, anna.ohrwall.ronnback@ltu.se
Arjoo Arjoo, Luleå tekniska universitet, arjoo.arjoo@ltu.se
Learn more on the project website
