The Apulia pilot

Apulia, Italy: short food supply chains between farm and city

main tellingexample world: italydepth: standard3 min markdown

Apulia (Puglia) forms the heel of Italy: hill villages, old farmland and hundreds of kilometres of Mediterranean coast, with cities such as Bari and Lecce. Agritourism, educational masserie (farmsteads) and social farms are part of regional life, and short supply chains helped producers through economic crises.

Visitors at a farm stall in Apulia. Photo: PoliRuralPlus pilot materials (RP4), poliruralplus.eu

The challenge

The pilot wants to strengthen farming by linking it to services that make rural life viable: short supply chains, social and educational farms, educational forests, agritourism. It must engage young people, improve digitisation and skills, and tie research to practice. The DEMO focus groups found strong producer awareness of short chains, but also fragmented supply, weak cooperation, logistics and communication costs, little training and low awareness of regional policies.

What the plan sets out

By 2028 the RAP targets 30 % more agri-food volume through SFSCs, 20 % lower logistics-related greenhouse-gas emissions and 15 % more jobs in ICT, advisory services, food production and marketing linked to SFSCs. The brief recommends:

• an Apulia SFSC Innovation Hub, a one-stop advisory centre;
• AKIS funding for advisers and certification in digital and sustainable agriculture;
• higher annual SFSC spending, co-financed by EAFRD, the national Recovery and Resilience Plan and private capital;
• SFSC measures in the Smart Specialisation Strategy;
• capacity building for 500 young farmers and women entrepreneurs;
• a single digital permitting window, and a regional law on sustainable food systems.

Tools, open calls and status

The open calls built up in steps. INCO (Mobilise) formed a network of experts, producers and consumers to explore SFSC business models, including AI-based solutions. Field2Fork AI Hub (Develop) is building a “Personal Farmer” chatbot that reads natural-language dietary and ethical preferences and proposes several personalised shopping carts from small and medium producers across Puglia.

The pilot reports that it mapped policies and funding for short chains, flagged gaps in advisory services and regional strategy, and discussed results with regional authorities. It also tested JackDaw for access to territorial information. The hub and the regional law remain proposals; D7.4 lists a “Made in Apulia” food brand among the expected results.