CORE Organic is the acronym for "Coordination of European Transnational Research in Organic Food and Farming Systems". As an ERA-NET action, it intends to increase cooperation between national research activities.
CORE Organic Cofund is the continuation of the ERA-Nets CORE Organic I and II, and CORE Organic plus. The overall objective of CORE Organic is to enhance quality, relevance and utilization of resources in European research in organic food and farming and to establish a joint pool for financing transnational research in organic food and farming.
The background for this objective is that the public European research and development effort in organic food and farming is characterized by small research communities, often scattered and fragmented both geographically and institutionally. This generates a need for gathering the dispersed expertise into a critical mass, to maintain and increase the competitive quality and relevance of research. CORE Organic is coordinated by International Centre for Research in Organic Food Systems, ICROFS.
Organic agriculture is considered one of the important development pathways towards a more sustainable agriculture and food production. This development has been and will be dependent on continuous research and innovation. CORE Organic Cofund will continue, update and consolidate the series of transnational research calls that support a focused and coordinated research and innovation effort covering the most important challenges along the organic value chains.
Potential call topics are for example: increasing the organic production potentials, enhancing resource efficiency, and improving animal welfare. In addition, this research and innovation plays a key role in adapting to the new EU regulations on Organic Farming. The new CORE Organic network will be expanded with additional partners from Netherlands and Italy totalling to 25 partners from 19 countries. One joint call with 3-4 topics will be launched with co-funding from the European Commission and another call without EU co-funding is being planned for 2019 as part of the additional activities. Other ERA-NETs with a similar scope will be invited to join this second call.
The CORE Organic partners are working to increase innovation potential, knowledge accessibility, alignment of national research and international outreach in support of the ERA-NET’s objectives. CORE Organic will closely monitor the funded projects and offer assistance regarding stakeholder involvement and dissemination in order to secure high impact of the research efforts. An impact assessment will be performed after the end of the projects. Looking to the future, the CORE Organic Cofund aims to deliver results that can be used to develop the organic sector throughout Europe and the world, and to continue to be a key player in the European Research Area.
24 partners from 21 European countries/regions
Denmark (ICROFS coordinator), Germany (BLE deputy coordinator), Austria, Belgium (Flanders and Wallonia), Estonia, Finland, France, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Turkey and the United Kingdom.
Stakeholder participant