Open topic: Innovating for on-farm post-harvest operations, storage and transformation of crops into food and non-food products
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See in 5 min if you're eligible for Open topic: Innovating for on-farm post-harvest operations, storage and transformation of crops into food and non-food products offering max €18.0M funding💰 Funding Details
Funding Description
1. What the Grant Finances
* Type of action: Horizon Innovation Action (IA) – market-oriented R&I, TRL 5-7 → first deployment/validation in operational environment.
* Budget per project: up to €18 million EU contribution.
* Funding rate:
* 70 % of eligible direct costs for profit-making entities (+25 % flat-rate indirect costs).
* 100 % for non-profit legal entities.
* Eligible cost categories (non-exhaustive):
* Personnel, equipment, consumables, travel.
* Demonstration pilots on-farm (incl. seasonal trials).
* SME-led business model development & market studies.
* Environmental/LCA assessments, carbon footprint analysis.
* Communication, dissemination & exploitation (incl. audiovisual material).
* Financial Support to Third Parties (FSTP): up to 30 % of EU contribution to fund farmers/SMEs that test, validate or co-develop the innovations (max €60k per third party recommended).
* Non-eligible costs: land purchase >10 % of total, large-scale infrastructure, standard commercial activities, repayable VAT, in-kind contributions not used on the action.
2. Who Can Apply
* Minimum consortium: 3 independent legal entities from 3 different EU Member States or Horizon Europe associated countries.
* Mandatory multi-actor approach (MAA): consortium must include at least:
* Farmers/farm associations (incl. organic farm(s))
* SMEs/technology providers
* Researchers & knowledge organisations
* Optional: food/non-food processors, investors, regional authorities, NGOs.
* Organisations from non-associated third countries may join as “associated partners” (no EU funding) if they bring essential expertise.
* Ethics & regulatory compliance required (food/feed safety, novel food, CAP, climate law, UTP directive, machinery directive, etc.).
3. Key Grant Parameters
* Call identifier: HORIZON-CL6-2025-02-FARM2FORK-02-two-stage.
* Opening date: 6 May 2025.
* Deadlines:
* Stage 1 short proposal (max 10 pages): 4 Sep 2025, 17:00 CET.
* Stage 2 full proposal: 18 Feb 2026, 17:00 CET.
* Project duration: typically 4–5 years.
* Grant Agreement Model (MGA): Horizon-AG budget-based.
* Open Science obligations: immediate Open Access to publications; data management plan within 6 months.
* IPR: consortium defines ownership & access rights in CA; exploitation pathway demanded.
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🇪🇺 Strategic Advantages
EU-wide Advantages and Opportunities for the HORIZON-CL6-2025-02-FARM2FORK-02 Grant
1. Strategic EU Added Value
Transnational Demonstration & Scalability
• Pilot sites can be located in multiple pedo-climatic regions (Mediterranean, Continental, Nordic, Atlantic), validating solutions under real EU heterogeneity and accelerating EU-wide market fit.
• Cross-border comparisons generate statistically robust evidence that national projects cannot deliver, strengthening eventual EU policy uptake.
Single Market Leverage
• Harmonised EU food & feed regulations (e.g. organic regulation 2018/848, novel food, waste/by-product rules) allow project outputs to be commercialised in 27 Member States without re-engineering.
• A single Intellectual Property (IP) bundle (patent, plant variety right, software license) can be defended across the whole EU via the Unitary Patent/Unified Patent Court, reducing legal costs.
2. Alignment with Flagship EU Policies
• Directly supports European Green Deal, Farm-to-Fork Strategy, EU Climate Law, CAP eco-schemes and the Organic Action Plan—ensuring high political visibility and smoother acceptance by paying agencies.
• Provides evidence for the evaluation of the Unfair Trading Practices (UTP) Directive by showing how on-farm processing can rebalance bargaining power.
• Contributes to Bioeconomy Strategy and Circular Economy Action Plan by valorising crop side-streams into non-food bioproducts.
3. R&I Synergies and Critical Mass
• Can capitalise on >€600 M of Horizon 2020 & Horizon Europe results (e.g. projects like CIRCULAR AGRONUTRIENTS, FOX, AGRO2CIRCULAR), creating an immediate knowledge “springboard” and avoiding duplication.
• Access to EU R&I infrastructures (ESFRI food hubs, EU Digital Innovation Hubs, agri-living labs) lowers TRL scaling costs.
4. SME and Farmer Empowerment at Continental Scale
• Up to 30 % cascade funding permits hundreds of SMEs/farms from different Member States to experiment, thus:
– increasing the statistical likelihood of breakthrough cases,
– ensuring wide linguistic & cultural dissemination,
– creating early adopter networks that act as multipliers inside EIP-AGRI Operational Groups.
• Transnational buyer–supplier matchmaking widens the pool of offtakers (bio-based industries, retailers) and reduces dependence on local monopsonies.
5. Economies of Scale in Sustainability Impact
• Joint carbon-footprint baselining across regions enables aggregated climate-impact claims that reach the 10 kt CO₂e/yr threshold often sought by private green-finance instruments (e.g., Innovation Fund, InvestEU).
• Pooling residual biomass streams across borders unlocks feedstock volumes sufficient for profitable biorefineries, which are rarely achievable at single-country scale.
6. Regulatory & Standardisation Advantages
• Pan-EU consortium can co-create voluntary sustainability standards (CEN, ISO) faster, influencing future legislative text and giving partners a first-mover advantage.
• Early dialogue with EFSA, ECHA and national competent authorities in parallel shortens time-to-market for novel foods, biopesticides, or bio-based materials.
7. Access to Complementary EU Funding & Financing
• Results can feed directly into CAP Strategic Plans (EAFRD) for mass deployment, enabling farmers to combine Horizon grants with CAP investment measures.
• Demonstrated climate benefits improve eligibility for the EU Innovation Fund, Life Carbon Farming and Green Bond issuances.
• Synergies with regional ERDF programmes allow pilot regions to co-fund physical storage or processing infrastructure.
8. Risk Mitigation Through Diversification
• Geographical spread reduces agronomic risk (drought, pests) and supply-chain disruptions; lessons learned in one region can act as contingency blueprints for another.
• Shared data platforms (leveraging GAIA-X and EU Digital Agriculture Data Space) provide real-time benchmarking, lowering the probability of technological or market failure.
9. Long-Term EU Legacy
• Open, practice-oriented materials in all EU official languages feed directly into the CAP Farm Advisory System and vocational curricula (Erasmus+).
• Creation of an EU-level Community of Practice ensures continuity beyond project end, facilitating continuous updating of best-practice repositories (e.g., EIP-AGRI, EU CAP Network).
10. Key Take-Away
By operating at EU scale, consortia can:
1. Validate innovations in diverse settings, ensuring replicability.
2. Exploit the single market and unified IP frameworks for faster commercial roll-out.
3. Align with multiple EU policy instruments, securing political and financial tailwinds.
4. Mobilise a critical mass of SMEs and farmers through cascade funding.
5. Generate aggregated sustainability impacts that attract follow-on green finance.
The result is a competitive advantage that no national-only project can match, positioning participants as frontrunners in climate-smart, value-adding on-farm post-harvest operations across Europe.
Ready to Apply?
Get a personalized assessment of your eligibility and application strategy
See in 5 min if you're eligible for Open topic: Innovating for on-farm post-harvest operations, storage and transformation of crops into food and non-food products offering max €18.0M funding