i-Danha Food Lab Annual Event

Lisbon, 22nd November 2018

Three years ago, Idanha-a-Nova Municipality challenged BGI to enter on a unique adventure, to create, in the oldest Roman village in Portugal, something so unique that talent, investment, and job creation would follow. And that’s how i-Danha Food Lab was born, the ultimate AgTech Demonstrator in the countryside. Its results were presented from the 9th to the 11th of November, at the annual event, bringing together in Monsanto a community of key stakeholders that are concerned and committed to working towards sustainable organic food production.

The Municipality of Idanha-a-Nova brings together three UNESCO recognitions: Naturtejo Geopark, Biosphere Reserves Network and as the Creative City of Music. This municipality had the honor of being the first bio-region in Portugal while developing the Restart Strategy, with a set of four programs that ensure that everyone is on board with this project. These four programs are Idanha Green Valley (related with innovation where i-Danha Food Lab lies), Idanha Vive (improving quality of living), Idanha Experimenta (touristic approach for visitors) and Idanha Made In (boosting local traditional commerce).

BGI and Idanha-a-Nova’s Municipality partnership started in 2016, and the goal has always been the same: stop Idanha-a-Nova’s desertification. As BGI is an MIT Portugal initiative aiming at accelerating deep technology startups, it comes up with a technology-related solution. Hence, since then, it was started the path to build a hub of technologies for food production that do not use artificial chemicals, genetically modified seeds, and that would use technology innovation to increase efficiency avoiding resources waste. Every year these two entities organize an annual event to present the results and ideate on how to improve, close deals and boost the technologies that belong to this organic agriculture “showroom”.

Regarding the results of the i-Danha Food Lab accelerator, it counts with two editions, 81 applications received from 17 countries. 13 startups were selected, which together have raised €261 000 and generated 73 jobs.

The 3rd Edition of the i-Danha Food Lab Annual Event occurred on the 9th, 10th and 11th of November in Monsanto, a village that belongs to the Municipality of Idanha-a-Nova, and that is considered the “most Portuguese village in Portugal”. Actually, i-Danha Food Lab annual event was one of the many inside the project “Aldeias Históricas” that took place in Monsanto for a week. This project envisages to show the best of the most historical Portuguese villages, and all the potential they carry. So at the same time as the conference, participants could also attend parallel workshops regarding local culture, music, art, visits to monuments, try local gastronomy by discovering the many wonders of Monsanto.

i-Danha Food Lab annual event not only marked the end of its Accelerator, but also focuses on getting the community to think and debate about future advances in the food production circular economy system designed by BGI back in 2016, and that has been suffering improvements and developments every year. This aims at minimizing waste and CO2 emissions while facing a major problem: the increase of the population and the necessity to feed it with high quality and healthy food. At the same time, many initiatives are taking place to educate the population and make it aware of the importance or food security and nutrition.

The event started in Lisbon, on the 9th, where participants were taken on an exclusive “green” train ride heading to Monsanto. During this trip, the attendees had the opportunity to network with relevant experts and investors on 1:1 meetings, while some live show animation contextualized the participants about Idanha-a-Nova’s history and culture. This journey was followed by a Welcome Cocktail at Monsanto.

On the 10th, participants had the opportunity to attend various roundtables, workshops, and sessions about multiple topics related to innovation, investment, success stories and best practices in both CleanTech and organic farming themes. Participants also had the possibility of discovering what is the state of the art regarding research, as well as getting to know the startups of i-Danha Food Lab accelerator, EIT Climate KIC Accelerator – main CleanTech accelerator in Europe, which is developed in Portugal by BGI.

During the day, the audience also witnessed the presentation of ten agri-food startups from EIT Food Innovation Grant finale, where the startup selected for first prize got a €10 000 grant and a second prize was €5 000 grant. The first prize winner was Sponsh, who is developing a textile layer that is placed over crops and works like a sponge – when it is humid it captures water, and when it is dry it drops the water, ensuring water efficiency in drought-affected sites. The second-place winner was TerraPro, an i-Danha Food Lab Accelerator alumni, working on sensors for precision agriculture, increasing crop’s yields and that is preventing/dealing with plagues.

To close the day, all the participants were divided into groups and explored solutions for traditional businesses from Idanha-a-Nova. In one hand there was Nature Fields that produces organic autochthonous meet and wants a more ecological package and market valuation for a better-quality meat and more sustainable. In the other hand was BluePanopoly, a project that envisions blueberry grafting, for optimization of organic production, avoiding plagues and making the crops more resilient to change. The idea is to map out the best “grafting recipes”, the problem is the lack of the qualified people for the seasonal work aligned with the difficulty of selling the blueberries considering the value added. The over 200 participants had to ideate about these problems, and some collaborations seemed to arise.

On the 11th participants had the opportunity to visit two local businesses, namely Sementes Vivas, which sells non-genetic modified seeds while mapping the diversity of endogenous species, improving their efficiency through breeding – and use many top-notch technologies to do so. This work is fundamental once will offset seasonality in farming, ensure biological diversity and increase local resilience.

The other place visited was Centro Documental Raiano, which has more than eleven thousand archives, of 600 different themes, all related to ecology, natural health and organic farming.

The event ended with a train trip back to Lisbon on the “green” train.

During the 3 days, there were over 230 participants, amongst them at least 33 startups, 9 international speakers, 11 universities’ representatives, 5 research centers’ representatives, 8 investors. The event was also honored with the presence of the Chief of Information Office of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Francisco Sarmento, and the presence of his Excellency the Portuguese Secretary of State of Science, Technology and Higher Education, João Sobrinho Teixeira. This year i-Danha Food Lab counted with the presence of EIT Food, EIT Climate-KIC, and EIT Health, Innovation and Knowledge Centers from the European Institute of Innovation and Technology from the European Commission.

It was a unique moment, since national and international researchers, entrepreneurs, relevant experts, policy stakeholders, and investors got together to share knowledge, debate and create new solutions for the agri-food challenges that European Countries are facing. BGI closed a partnership with Millenium BCP in order to facilitate the micro-credit for starting farmers, which aligned with the Municipality support for organic farming is helping to boost job creation in Idanha and Above all there was co-creation and a path for future collaborations was traced. Let’s wait for next year’s annual event to know how those worked out.