---
id: ch6-food-challenge
type: spine
title: "Short food supply chains: willing producers, missing organisation"
readingTime: 2
standalone: true
core: true
teaser: "In Apulia, three out of four small farm businesses surveyed already sell through short chains. The barrier is the organisation around them, not willingness."
voice: universal
parent: null
diagram: diagram-food-supply-chain
recallQ: "According to the Apulia evidence, what holds short food supply chains back: producer willingness, or something else?"
recallA: "Not willingness: 76% of the small Apulian farm businesses DEMO surveyed already had experience with short-chain channels. The bottlenecks are organisational and infrastructural: fragmented supply, logistics and last-mile costs, high communication costs, missing skills and advice, and slow permitting and scarce finance."
highlights:
  - "76% of the small Apulian farm businesses surveyed by DEMO already had experience with short-chain channels"
  - "The barriers are organisational: fragmented supply, last-mile logistics, communication costs, missing skills"
  - "Apulia's RAP targets for 2028: +30% volume sold through short chains, -20% logistics emissions, +15% jobs"
  - "Short chains feature in four pilots: Apulia, the Czech-Bavarian border, Malta and Central Greece"
status: accepted
concept: short-food-supply-chains
conceptTitle: "Short food supply chains"
parents: rural-urban-linkages
lang: en
lens: generic
depth: standard
formalism: none
visuality: balanced
lengthBand: standard
genre: explainer
state: core
carriers: prose|table|diagram
---

A **short food supply chain (SFSC)** shortens the path between a farm and the people who eat its food. The PoliRural+ pilots work with farm-gate and on-farm sales, farmers' markets, home delivery, producer e-commerce, local pickup points and direct supply to restaurants or public canteens. The Apulia Regional Action Plan calls SFSCs "a core instrument for strengthening rural–urban linkages, improving farm income, and advancing the objectives of the European Green Deal" ([rural-urban linkages](#c/rural-urban-linkages)).

## Willingness is not the problem

The Outreach-call project DEMO (Cluster Srl) surveyed small Apulian agricultural businesses and found that **76% of those interviewed already had experience with SFSC channels**. Its five focus groups then named the real bottlenecks: perishability of fresh products, logistics coordination, cooperation between entrepreneurs, food-safety certification, and **high communication costs, supply fragmentation and a lack of specialised staff**.

The Apulia policy brief lists the same pattern at regional scale:

- **Fragmented infrastructure**: physical hubs, cold-chain capacity and collective branding are under-developed.
- **Digital divide**: incomplete rural broadband slows e-commerce and traceability tools.
- **Skills gap**: SMEs lack advice on precision farming, the circular bio-economy and digital marketing.
- **Logistics and transaction costs**: dispersed production and weak last-mile delivery inflate costs.
- **Environmental stress** (water scarcity, soil degradation) and **bureaucracy** (long permitting, little risk finance).

## What the Apulia RAP aims for

By 2028 the RAP targets **+30% agri-food volume sold through SFSCs, -20% logistics-related greenhouse-gas emissions and +15% jobs** in ICT, advisory, food production and marketing. Among its proposed instruments are an **Apulia SFSC Innovation Hub** (a one-stop advisory centre), a single digital window for permits, an annual "SFSC Regulatory Roadmap" and capacity building for 500 young farmers and women entrepreneurs. These are targets and recommendations, not results.

## Short chains across the pilots

| Pilot | Role of short chains | Source |
|---|---|---|
| [Apulia](#c/apulia-pilot) | Core RAP instrument; 2040 goal: short chains "become the standard" | D7.3 Annex 4; D7.4 §4.2 |
| [Czech-Bavarian border](#c/czech-bavarian-pilot) | "One enabler" of farmer resilience; less reliance on long-distance markets | D7.3 Annex 6 |
| [Malta](#c/malta-pilot) | Visibility and market access for local food on import-dependent islands | D7.3 Annex 9 |
| [Central Greece](#c/greece-pilot) | Primary production linked with agritourism (RURBAN Challenge) | D6.3 §3.2 |

The next blocks show what open-call teams actually built for these chains: a chat assistant in Foggia, a supplier map in the Pilsen Region, a digital gateway on Kythera and a skills-and-market push in Malta.

**Sources:**
- D7.3 Policy Brief No. 1, Annex 4 "Enhancing Short Food Supply Chains in Puglia (Apulia), Italy"; Annex 6; Annex 9. [PDF](https://www.poliruralplus.eu/docs/349/D7.3_Policy_Brief_No.1.pdf)
- D6.3 Comprehensive Report on Funded Activities and Impact Assessment, §3.2 Project results and achievements (Outreach call: DEMO; Mobilise call: RURBAN Challenge). [PDF](https://www.poliruralplus.eu/docs/437/D6.3_Comprehensive_report.pdf)
- D7.4 Exploitation plans and business models, edition 1, §4.2 Roadmaps extending to 2030 and beyond (Italy). [PDF](https://www.poliruralplus.eu/docs/342/D7.4_Exploitation_plans__business_models_edition_1_v1.pdf)