Date: 06 Apr 2022
New support for the agri-food sector in mitigating and adapting to climate change
Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue, and Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Martin Heydon, with responsibility for Research and Development, have announced a new €2 million International Strategic Partnership to support national climate action in Agriculture.
The EU’s European Institute of Technology (EIT) and the European Commission, EIT Climate KIC will partner with public and private stakeholders in the Irish agri-food sector to combine their international expertise on climate innovation with local knowledge and organisation to support the agri-food sector in mitigating and adapting to climate change.
Lead by the Department of Agriculture, Food, and the Marine the project aims to deliver knowledge and insights, joint capability development and practical action to support Ireland’s agri-food, bioeconomy, and climate aspirations. The specific focus of the work is to move away from individual, incremental research and demonstration projects and innovation, and instead create and implement a coordinated set of innovation actions, which aim to deliver wide-ranging positive change.
The strategic partnership is for two years initially with an overall budget of €2 million, with the department investing €1.6 million and Climate KIC investing €400,000.
The partnership approach will be used to:
- Understand and position the existing public and private sector initiatives
- Create a framework to connect and integrate existing initiatives and actors, and to identify and introduce innovation actions across business, the public sector, and communities
- Raising and deploying grant funding and private investment capital
The Ministers highlighted that the Strategic Partnership would see EIT Climate-KIC apply their ‘Deep Demonstration’ model of innovation to the entire agri-food and biobased value chain, from soil to farm to fork. This will involve working with stakeholders from public, private, non-governmental and Higher Education sectors to develop a range of strategic and coordinated solutions on climate action that will be tested and demonstrated.
The partnership will initially map the Irish agri-food system to understand and position the existing public and private sector partners and their initiatives.
Further steps will then create a framework to connect and integrate existing initiatives and actors, and to identify and introduce new innovation actions across business, the public sector, and communities.
A key step will see the partnership identify opportunities to raise and deploy grant funding and private investment capital to support the innovation actions.
EIT Climate-KIC
European Institute of Technology (EIT) - www.climate-kic.org - is Europe’s leading innovation community working to accelerate the transition to a zero-carbon economy. EIT Climate-KIC is a Knowledge and Innovation Community (KIC), working to accelerate the transition to a zero-carbon, climate-resilient society through identifying and supporting innovation that helps society mitigate and adapt to climate change.
Climate KIC brings together partners in the worlds of business, academia, and the public and non-profit sectors to create networks of expertise, through which innovative products, services and systems can be developed, brought to market and scaled-up for impact. Through these networks and convening power, EIT Climate-KIC brings together effective groups to create the innovation that can lead to systemic change