AgriVentures

Agriventures is a non-profit, non-governmental cluster organisation (NGO) based in Sofia, Bulgaria, bringing together start-ups, farmers, universities, investors, research institutions and industry active in agriculture, food and rural innovation. Our mission is to accelerate the market uptake of agri-food research and deep technologies by connecting innovators with the infrastructure, expertise, funding and networks they need - nationally and across Europe.

What expertise we offer

• Field-testing infrastructure: an Open Living Lab — a demonstration plot in northern Bulgaria with facilities for testing and demonstrating new technologies, crops and products in a real-world farming environment.

• Sustainability/ESG assessment: VerAgro, our own LCA-based sustainability-assessment platform for food and agricultural producers, used to benchmark environmental and ESG performance of primary producers.

• Digital tools: the Agriventures platform, which matches start-ups and agri-food entities to EU and international funding opportunities.

• Network reach: a cluster of 20+ countries' partners, including digital agri-tech companies, labs and start-ups (e.g. Smart Farm Robotix, Agrovar, Enthela, ONDO Solutions, UPL Bulgaria) and academic partners (University of Food Technologies – Plovdiv).

• Regulatory and policy monitoring on land use, carbon certification and CAP evolution.

• Training, dissemination and community-building, delivered through recurring events (AgriVentures Connect, Green Transition Forum) and EDIH services (AgroDigiRise).

Agriventures has secured over €1M in EU funding and currently runs 6 active EU-co-funded projects, including: AgroDigiRise (Digital Europe EDIH for agriculture - digital/precision farming uptake); SYSARM (Erasmus+ - systemic agri-food resilience and modernisation); Circular Voices (circular food systems, linked to the CFS Network and the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural GHGs, Agriventures as coordinator); TrueFoods (post-harvest sustainability and resilience across 8 countries); Safe-Agri (security/dual-use assessment framework for agri-food innovation); and Foodity/SEBP, under which we developed our own methodology for assessing farmers' sustainability.

Agriventures typically contributes as beneficiary and ecosystem-building/dissemination/testing partner (coordinator on Circular Voices), covering: stakeholder and farmer engagement, pilot/testing environments, training and capacity-building, communication and dissemination, and co-definition of research and market needs with end users.

We combine a real-world pilot site (Open Living Lab), a ready-made sustainability/ESG assessment methodology (VerAgro), and direct access to a network of digital agri-tech start-ups, labs and farmers - plus a demonstrated ability to translate research outputs into training, dissemination and stakeholder uptake at national and EU level.