Synergy Days is designed to celebrate and showcase European research projects that are transforming the European agri-food sector. Who are they, and how are they using digital technology to innovate the sector? We spoke to Professor Sally Shortall from GRASS CEILING to learn more about the project, its goals and journey.

 

 

What inspired the creation of your project? 

I have worked on the question of equality for rural and farm women for many years. In 2016 I did research for the Scottish Government on women’s equality in agriculture, which had a significant impact on policy. I had also just completed a report for the European Court of Auditors looking at women’s equality in agriculture at the European level. When the Horizon Europe call came to lead a consortium looking at rural and farm women’s role in leading on ecological innovations, I saw it as an exciting opportunity to develop this research. My colleague and good friend Bettina Bock from Wageningen has also worked extensively on this topic. We spent a number of days together in a fishing village in Ireland in late October 2021 and fleshed out the beginning of our proposal. We have wonderful partners from across the nine countries involved.

Can you share some of the key milestones or successes your project has achieved to date?

GRASS CEILING has already had many successes. We have developed benchmarking tools and a training webinar to teach people how to benchmark policy documents to see if they advance gender equality. Our approach is to address macro, meso, and micro level barriers to women’s equality. Looking at European and national policies allows us to shine a lens on macro and meso level barriers. We have gathered robust evidence across the nine countries about some of the obstacles women innovators face, ranging from a lack of micro credit to no childcare in remote rural regions. We are establishing a European Policy Forum to bring our evidence to policy makers. We have established living labs in our nine countries where eight women innovators receive training, advice and support around their initiatives. We have had a very successful consortium meeting in Brussels where DG Agri actively engaged, and the women innovators presented their initiatives and products.

What innovative technologies or methods are you most excited about within your project? 

There are a lot of innovative methods in GRASS CEILING! Our living labs are very successful. They meet three times a year, for a full day, and are co-chaired by an academic and a stakeholder organisation. The eight women innovators receive training, information and most importantly they share information and knowledge between themselves.  They have formed support groups for each other. It is wonderful to see how these have blossomed. We also pay our innovators a daily rate as we did not want our approach to be extractive. While the women are receiving training and mentoring, we are also learning from their knowledge. I think the benchmarking tools that we have developed are very innovative and will allow for greater scrutiny of how effectively policies address gender equality. We have also done foresight analyses, looking to see what needs to be in place by 2040 provide women with a more equal role.

What advice would you give to other innovators looking to make an impact in the agricultural / food sector through digital technologies? 

Make sure you engage all the key actors; users, producers, stakeholder organisations and most importantly, policy makers. It is important to build this engagement into the project from the very beginning. It is easier to engage EU policy makers if you hold consortium meetings in Brussels.

What is the added value of Synergy Days for your project? 

It is an amazing opportunity! It showcases the exciting work our consortium is undertaking. It is also an opportunity to hear about other research projects and to build synergies.