Re-Cereal is one of the finalist projects nominated for this year’s edition of the RegioStar Award. The Interreg project between partners from two Italian and one Austrian region shows that overcoming border barriers and cooperating can help regions of the EU to be more competitive.
The project: back to the roots
"Creating new opportunities whilst revitalizing cultural heritage" is how the main goal from Re-Cereal can be summarized. The project was initiated by Dr. Schär, a South Tyrolean company, and European market leader in gluten-free products. Together with six partners from its neighboring regions Friuli Venezia Giulia and Carinthia, they aim at bringing back the minor cereals millet and oats and the pseudo-cereals buckwheat.
In these regions, cultivating cereal can be traced back to the Cop-Bronze age. Whilst there used to be cultivated a variety of crop species, different socio-economic factors led to a change in the last 100 years: today, the farmland is mainly used for intensive cultivations to prepare animal feed, like corn and wheat. Apart from being part of the cultural heritage of the region, they are also healthy: all of these have a big nutritional value full of important vitamins and proteins.
Positive effects for the regions and their people
"We started the project with research on how we wanted to improve the species to make them more compatible for our regional climatic conditions. Then we bought different varieties of seeds, planted them on different grounds in South Tyrol and Carinthia and did various tests on them. In the end, we will have a whole new variety of cereals with very high nutritional factors", explains Silvano Ciani, project manager of Dr. Schär’s research center in Trieste and responsible for Re-Cereal.
The project started in November of 2016 and will be going on until April 2019. By then, the partners are expecting to have achieved not only a development of new selections of millet and buckwheat and an improvement of their nutritional and sensorial properties but also the creation of new products, thus having positive effects on the regional economy and the people. "We also want to create a network for professional expertise on the field that can be shared and ultimately help all the regions on a long-term basis," he adds.
Interreg: finding common ground and overcoming obstacles
These kinds of Interreg Programmes exist between many of the European Union’s member states. In the case of Re-Cereal, it’s the Interreg A-V Programme Italy–Austria. It covers an area of over 50,000 square kilometers and a population of over 5.5 million inhabitants in Italy and Austria. Its budget for the years 2014-2020 consists of 98 million euros, with more than 82 million coming directly from the European Funds for Regional Development.
With these funds, the programme promotes Italian-Austrian cooperation projects in the fields of research and innovation, nature and culture, institutional capacity and community-led local development.
For Mr. Ciani, working with other regions has been an enrichment for the project: "Each partner could bring in his own specialties. Of course, you have to get used to working together at first and find a way to communicate, but that is the same in every cooperation, cross-border or national. We are very happy with how the project has been running so far and are looking forward to other ones." He also states that Interreg V-A Italy-Austria has been a big support in understanding the whole admission process.
For Dr. Heidi Reinstadler, from the local managing authorities of Interreg Italy-Austria in Bolzano, (Italy), they are the "interface" between EU and regions, because is their job "to help the projects through the whole process."
Bringing the EU closer to the people?
Apart from their economic advantages, Reinstadler sees another very important potential in these projects, which is reaching the people and working against EU-scepticism: "Since these projects have a direct impact on the regions, it can help make people realize that the European Union is doing something important for them."
By Anina Vontavon (Italy)
