ALLIANCE represents a paradigm shift in the Food Supply Chain Systems’ management for the combat against Food Fraud, distinguishing from the traditionally approaches that leverage monolithic digitalized logistic solutions and standalone FSC interoperability protocols. ALLIANCE aims to provide a holistic framework that safeguards data integrity and veracity, enhances traceability and transparency and reinforces interoperability in quality labelled supply chain of organic, PDO, PGI, and GI food, through innovative technology solutions and validated approaches (such as distributed ledger technologies supported by IoT sensing devices, providing extensible anchors to interoperability protocols and use of in-situ portable rapid testing devices to detect adulteration and verify food origin and authenticity) and fosters evidence-based decision making through AI and ML for preventative interventions and actionable planning. The proposed framework will improve social and economic sustainability of quality labelled food supply chains by ensuring quality & authenticity, increasing food safety, while also considering climatic and environmental impacts of food products. The technologies to be employed in this project will be described and demonstrated in detail to reach higher technology readiness levels (TRLs) and enable smooth and rapid adoption by all stakeholders.

SMARTCHAIN is an ambitious, 3 year project with 43 partners from 11 European countries including key stakeholders from the domain of short food supply chain as actors in the project. The central objective is to foster and accelerate the shift towards collaborative short food supply chains and, through concrete actions and recommendations, to introduce new robust business models and innovative practical solutions that enhance the competitiveness and sustainability of the European agri-food system. Using bottom-up, demand-driven research, the SMARTCHAIN consortium i) will perform a multi-perspective analysis of 18 case studies of short food supply chains in terms of technological, regulatory, social, economic and environmental factors, ii) will assess the linkages and interactions among all stakeholders involved in short food supply chains and iii) will identify the key parameters that influence sustainable food production and rural development among different regions in Europe. The project aims to establish 9 national communities of short food supply chains (Innovation and Collaboration Hubs) in different partner countries (France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Serbia, Spain and Switzerland) and a virtual innovation hub in order to facilitate stakeholder engagement, bringing farmers and consumers together in a trust-enhancing environment enabling them to generate demand driven-innovations. Combination of scientific and practical knowledge and the use of innovation workshops will enable the development of practical innovative solutions as well as the promotion of a framework for different forms of collaborative short food supply chains in urban and rural areas. SMARTCHAIN will generate concrete actions for knowledge transfer, through the organisation of multi-stakeholder workshops and training activities for farmers and short food supply chain entrepreneurs.