InnOFoodLabs project: New paths for regional organic food

With the launch of the EU-funded "InnOFoodLabs" project, the University of Kassel is supporting twelve practical innovation projects along the organic food chain in Europe. The four-year project runs from September 2025 to August 2029 and aims to strengthen regional organic value chains, make them sustainable and contribute to a more sustainable and inclusive food system. Approaches in the processing and marketing of organic food as well as different forms of cooperation directly with farms will be tested, evaluated from the consumer's point of view and made usable for other regions.

In the innovation projects, farms as well as processing and marketing organizations test concrete solutions for the production and marketing of regional organic food. The focus is on alternative marketing channels, stronger cooperation between agriculture, processing, trade and consumers as well as innovative organizational and sales models. The innovations are tested directly in practice so that they have to work under real conditions.

The central test fields are twelve so-called Living Labs, existing businesses and organizations in which actors from agriculture, processing, trade, consulting, science and consumers work together on solutions. In Germany, two living labs from north-eastern Brandenburg and southern Bavaria are involved.

"In InnOFoodLabs, innovation does not necessarily mean inventing something completely new," says Dr. Benedikt Jahnke from the Department of Agricultural and Food Marketing at the University of Kassel. "The decisive factor is to further develop existing solutions in the respective regional context so that they also work for other regions."

Role of the University of Kassel in the joint project

Scientific support for the innovations is provided by the Department of Agricultural and Food Marketing, headed by Dr. Benedikt Jahnke and Prof. Dr. Katrin Zander. Progress and challenges in the implementation of the innovations are documented in innovation diaries, while on-site visits to the living labs intensify the exchange between practice and science. At the same time, the university supports the exchange between practice partners in order to pool experience and build a network that can also be used after the end of the project.

Another focus of the University of Kassel in the InnOFoodLabs project is on consumer research: it is investigating how consumers perceive new organic products, regional marketing channels or cooperation models, which factors influence their purchasing decisions and under what conditions innovations are marketable and transferable.

InnOFoodLabs thus contributes to the European Union's goal of increasing the proportion of organically farmed land to 25 percent by 2030. The project is aimed in particular at agricultural businesses and small and medium-sized processing companies and supports them in securing regional added value, tapping into new market opportunities and participating fairly in value creation.

More information at: https: //www.uni-kassel.de/fb11agrar/fachgebiete-einrichtungen/agrar-und-lebensmittelmarketing/forschung/innofoodlabs.html