Innovation transfer in EU rural areas: a social network analysis in "Short Food Supply Chain Knowledge and Innovation Network (SKIN)" - H2020 project

This study aims to introduce an innovative approach to spread knowledges in Food Supply Chain (FSC), strictly connected to the territorial actors, intended as regional nodes. To this extent, the nodes appear as local hubs concentrating knowledge and expertise, coming from research and real experiences. European Commission (EC) is strongly fostering sustainable growth, as proposed within the Horizon 2020 program. Also according to the EIP-AGRI Focus Group, the SFSC represents a relevant topic to improve farm incomes, sustainable farming systems and promote local economic development. In this sense, the SKIN project, an H2020 project coordinated by the University of Foggia, focuses on the assessment of good practices in Short Food Supply Chain (SFSC), spread in European areas through the implementation of strong networks. A fundamental part of the SKIN approach will be indeed represented by the regional nodes. A single regional node will deal with maintaining and consolidating the network among actors, increasing density, bonds and expansion. In long term, the foresights attain to realize networks among new communities and existing ones, involving different sectors and exploiting synergies. These synergies are also promoted within the EIP-AGRI final report on SFSC. The document highlights the need to get closer producers with consumers. To reach marketplaces without missing the economic sustainability, farms should be able to constantly understand current and future consumers’ behaviour. The principal challenge consists in providing a framework exploitable everywhere in European areas, though adapting it to the specific local needs. Regional nodes will exactly express the local desires and involve the expertise able to manage the common framework. The role of the experts will also consist in filtering and checking innovations and knowledge from other nodes that mainly fit with local actors. The analysis will be performed considering how to identify the local entities to be raised as regional nodes, and the bonds to be promoted will be carried out applying a social network analysis (SNA). Through SNA the networks show the bonds with edges connecting the nodes, and the thickness of those edges displays the number of exchanged records in information networks. Furthermore, several studies sustain that the length of the edges shows the time of the transactions. According to these, sustainable SFSC is the expression of an efficient network where the connections appear with short edges (the highest priority of the operators is to get closer consumers with producers) and thick edges (high transaction intensity). The methods arisen will be used in SKIN to discover which current players have an high influence within the SFSC and those one having latent market power, becoming potential leaders. SNA represents an essential method to keep under control the ongoing communities building, avoiding unproductivity relationships, being the main cause of wastefulness resources.