SMALLDERS - Smart Models for Agrifood Local vaLue chain based on Digital technologies for Enabling covid-19 Resilience and Sustainability

The COVID-19 pandemic (as well as previous crises that humanity has experienced along the years) has had disastrous impacts on the world economy and has highlighted all the fragility of supply chains both globally and locally. This unexpected event has directed much of the academic research in recent months. However, being a very recent event and still ongoing, so far, the majority of the scientific literature has focused on the assessment of the impacts of COVID on the supply chains from an economic, organizational, social and environmental point of view. Instead, very little has been done in terms of strategies to react and mitigate the impact of the pandemic (or COVID-19 like crises) on the players in the supply chain and, in particular, on small local food producers. The ambition of this project proposal is to fill this research gap, through the design, development and testing of a platform in which: smallholders, citizens, critical stakeholders, freight transport companies, policymakers are simultaneously present.

The main strategy behind the SMALLDERS project is to define, conceptualize, implement and test a software as a service platform based on a layered architecture. The SMALLDERS platform is characterized by four main layers: User Management Layer, Certification Layer, Dashboard Layer, Decision-Making Layer. As part of the different layers, the SMALLDERS architecture see the integration of a number of methodologies and enabling technologies and toolkits, namely (1) Web and mobile applications; (2) Artificial Intelligence based Knowledge Navigators; (3) New Business Models; (4) Sensors and Internet of Things (IoT); (5) BlockChain; (6) Multi-capitals Sustainability; (7) Modeling & Simulation (M&S) and Digital Twins.

The SMALLDERS project responds well to a number of impacts, as explained below. ● Ensure incomes to smallholders facing COVID-like crises: The application of the SMALLDERS platform will guarantee incomes to smallholders, even during COVID-like crises. The ability to offer and/ or request manpower will increase the resilience of smallholders in the face of worker illnesses and restrictions on mobility in the most acute periods of the crisis. ● Decrease inefficiencies and barriers to market access: The SMALLDERS platform will improve market access for smallholders. One of the main barriers to entry to the business-to-business (B2B) market of small agricultural producers is the impossibility of guaranteeing high quantities of product to critical stakeholders. This issue is solved through the smallholder-to-smallholder interface that allows the creation of homogeneous or heterogeneous consortia. ● Greater efficiency and sustainability in processes and the use of resources: The platform will provide a dashboard layer, characterized by multi-capital sustainability indicators, which will make it possible to monitor the performance of the agri-food chain under multiple scenarios, from the point of view of economic, environmental and social sustainability. ● Increase in mitigation capability: Unexpected crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic usually cause supply-side and demand-side disruptions, which need to be mitigated. The use of the SMALLDERS platform increases the resilience and mitigation capacity of smallholders in the face of the crisis. Supply-side disruptions (e.g., outbreaks among workers of small farmers) are limited as the platform facilitates supply-demand matching in the job market. Demand-side disruptions are limited by the possibility to create, through the SMALLDERS platform, new consortia that increase the bargaining power of smallholders. ● Increase profitability via either or both the reduction of production costs or/and the increase of quality: the SMALLDERS project will increase the profitability of smallholders thanks to the adoption of a number of enabling technologies including blockchain, web/mobile applications, intelligent assistants and knowledge navigators and simulation.