BRANCHES

The overall objective of the BRANCHES project is to foster knowledge transfer and innovation in agriculture, forestry and rural areas by improving the viability and competitiveness of biomass supply chains and promoting innovative technologies, rural bioeconomy solutions and sustainable agriculture and forest management.

This will be achieved by applying a participatory and multi-stakeholder approach involving relevant stakeholders in the various selected value chains, combined with a strong dissemination, exploitation and communication strategy to share BRANCHES project activities and results.

This will ultimately result in increased energy efficiency within biomass supply chains, and energy self-sufficiency of farms will be improved, while minimizing energy related cost. 

Research on building a strong, self-sufficient, circular and sustainable bioeconomy has accelerated over the last ten years and a wealth of knowledge has been generated.

However, due to the multiple sectors and complex value chains involved, a significant portion of this valuable information is at risk of going untapped, due to insufficient communication between the experts in these developments and the practitioners, i.e. the potential end users of this knowledge, such as farmers, foresters and entrepreneurs.

Practitioners are expected to provide raw materials and support the strengthening of a sustainable bioeconomy as an important aspect of rural development in their regions, but require enhanced information exchange networks such as those developed in the BRANCHES project to facilitate knowledge sharing and uptake.