COACH is a three-year EU-funded project which aims at facilitating collaboration between farmers, consumers, local governments and other actors to scale up short agri-food chains which rebalance farmers’ position, create win-wins for producers and consumers and drive innovation in territorial food systems. The project shall develop a series of emblematic good practice examples from 12 countries which demonstrate how farmers can access consumer-driven opportunities to improve their incomes and rebalance their position in food chains and creates a ‘living library’. Secondly, the project will deliver a knowledge-based suite of activities to support farmers and small operators to access information on consumer demand and improve their capacity to connect with consumers. COACH provides also new insights and guidance on the costs and margins for each link in the supply chain, demonstrating opportunities for improved incomes for farmers and small operators and reduced costs for intermediaries. Moreover, COACH maximises the impact of all the project’s activities through effective communication and dissemination, including policy engagement, in order to create a more enabling environment for collaborative agri-food chains.

ICLEI is the COACH lead expert on sustainable public procurement. Through its extensive network of cities, municipalities and towns working on sustainable public procurement, ICLEI will play a major role in amplifying project outreach, networking, dissemination towards local authorities and European institutions. ICLEI will design a Farm to Fork Toolkit for public authorities in order to improve sharing of experience and help them design appropriate tenders for healthy and fresh food supplied by small-scale producers and also to support farmers to know how to access these opportunities and will organise training sessions in Brussels. Besides, the first-ever cartoon on Farm-to-Fork sustainable public procurement has been launched in the framework of the project to highlight the importance of a multi-stakeholders approach in promoting inclusive, healthy, and sustainable food procurement processes from farm to fork. The message is clear: with the right procurement criteria, all the Sustainable Development Goals can fit on one public plate.