AGRI-BIOCIRCULAR-HUB: Excellence hub for a smart agriculture and circular bioeconomy towards a sustainable agrifood sector in widening countries (and beyond) is a Horizon Europe initiative that aims to establish a network of excellence hubs in smart agriculture and circular bioeconomy across Poland, Latvia, Ukraine, Belgium, and Spain. By linking academia, industry, public institutions, and citizens, the project fosters innovation, builds capacity, and enables sustainable transformation in the agrifood sector, with a strong focus on widening countries and emerging ecosystems such as Ukraine, EU ambitions and environmental standards. The project aims to increase the efficiency of agricultural production and ensure the preservation of natural resources and biodiversity.

Coordinator of the AGRI-BIOCIRCULAR-HUB Project is the Lviv Polytechnic National University. The institution of higher education is a multidisciplinary technical university in Ukraine, which has considerable experience in the field of engineering, environmental technologies and innovations. Lviv Polytechnic coordinates the project and leads activities related to project management, communication, mentoring and development of pilot projects in the field of circular economy. We talked about project coordination and much more with Myroslav Malyovanyi, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor, Head of the Department of ecology and balanced nature management of Lviv Polytechnic, Head of the Project Team.

Their path to the Horizon Europe Framework Programme Lviv Polytechnic began three years before the project. Before that, the institution submitted several more applications, but, unfortunately, they were not successful. However, the failures did not stop Lviv Polytechnic team, the core of which are scientists: Myroslav Malyovanyi, Ivan Tymchuk (PhD in agricultural sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of ecology and balanced nature management) and Volodymyr Zhuk (PhD in technical sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of hydraulic engineering and water engineering), but on the contrary – contributed to the accumulation of experience, finding strong partners, who then joined the AGRI-BIOCIRCULAR-HUB project consortium.

The team closely followed all the news and novelties in the Programme, assessed whether it was worth preparing an application for calls, with which partners, under what conditions, etc. So, polytechnics started working with the Beta research center (Spain). And it was they who led to the idea that, based on the terms of the call, it would be expedient if Ukraine were the coordinator and also supported Lviv Polytechnic in activities in the area of biocircular ecology. We are talking about the WIDERA call: HORIZON-WIDERA-2023-ACCESS-07-01 Excellence Hubs. So, the university took the chance to become the coordinator of the project consortium consisting of 21 organisations from five countries.

As Myroslav Malyovanyi notes, this is a rather powerful consortium and a lot of time and effort is spent precisely on organisational activities, communication with all members of the consortium, and not only on the implementation of the project. This is the complexity and multidimensionality of the coordinator’s work.

In general, all responsibilities were allocated in advance to the partners. The active phase of project application preparation lasted for a month and a half. Online meetings of consortium members took place once or twice a week. According to the head of the university team, it was a very busy period. The project application was written by all members of the consortium, but this process was managed by two experienced organisations: the Beta research center, which led Lviv Polytechnic team to take on the role of coordinator and whose advice was invaluable, as well as the Belgian consulting organisation Visiativ with considerable experience in submitting such applications. This organisation was not just involved in the work on the project application but became a partner of the project and is responsible for a very important area – distribution of mini grants for startups, understandable for the organisation but new for Lviv Polytechnic.

Myroslav Malyovanyi said that his team had no experience of participating in previous EU framework programs, such as Horizon 2020, but participated in two projects of the Erasmus+ and a project financed by the National Research Foundation of Ukraine. The head of the project team believes that this positive experience and the conclusions drawn during participation in other calls formed the basis of the ideas used in Horizon Europe. This is a very good practice, by the way, when the work of the previous project forms the basis of the next one.

So, when the idea was formed, they began to gather partners, based on the experience of previous activities. For example, Polish partners with whom Lviv Polytechnic previously submitted project proposals. Although the university was not successful in the past, it established cooperation and knew about their activities – and offered to include them in the project. Partners from Poland for their part also offered their partners. In addition, the Latvian partner was proposed by Spain, who had previous joint projects. So, they searched for partners for the consortium in such a way to form the consortium.

It should be noted that these were only known to the coordinator of the organisation, who had a certain level of competence and were open to cooperation. The team avoided involving random organisations in the consortium. The goal was to create a powerful team, a reliable partnership with proven organisations, in order to avoid possible obstacles during the implementation of the project in the future. Therefore, in the process of writing an application, if certain contradictions arose, the partners convinced each other and, the most important – found compromises.

Also, after receiving the notification that the project was selected for funding, the greatest difficulties were associated with the large number of organisations in the consortium when concluding the Grant Agreement, because some of them partially slowed down the work due to their own internal problems. It is important to note that there were no significant obstacles on the part of Ukrainian legislation. Mr. Malyovanyi noted that certain problems in individual partner organisations still continue. Polytechnic staff have a very well-established communication with the project officer, so they have not yet had such difficulties or questions that should be addressed to representatives of the National Contact Points network.

AGRI-BIOCIRCULAR-HUB has been implemented for more than a year, so thanks to it there have already been some positive changes for Ukraine. In particular, ways of optimal cooperation between Ukrainian partners, coordinated by Lviv Polytechnic, have been found. There are a significant number of them, because the project involves the participation of scientific, public organisations, and the authorities. Positive changes are also taking place at the state level: there has been an understanding that the circular economy is much better than the linear one. For example, Lviv Polytechnic actively cooperates with Green City Co., the only company having the platform for biocomposting in Ukraine, research is being carried out to optimise this process in the scientific field. But in addition, based on all the mentioned processes, the team proposes specific steps aimed at structural changes – one of the goals of the project. However, the most important thing for Ukraine in this project is to borrow the experience of other countries that have already begun to actively implement elements of the biocircular economy at the state level, and our progressive farmers and farms are still doing it independently. Therefore, the project aims to consolidate these efforts in order to better approach the implementation of the set goals.

In addition to the importance of the project for Ukraine, certain EU goals will also be achieved. The first, it is the promotion of cross-border and interregional research cooperation, the development and implementation of a long-term action plan for research and innovation in the field of sustainable and circular agriculture, which will increase the research potential of the participating countries. The second, is the creation and scaling of innovative business cases in each of these countries. Thus, within the scope of the project, microgrants are provided for startups with further control of their development in the agricultural sector. The third, it is the exchange of knowledge and best practices between regions, which is of great importance for Ukraine. Therefore, the project includes mentoring, training, and trips to the participating countries.

The Lviv Polytechnic team plans to continue participating in the Horizon Europe calls. Currently, an application has already been submitted for another project, which also has a scientific direction, but as a partner, not a coordinator. And for organisations that are just beginning to think about participating in the Programme, Myroslav Malyovany advises only one thing: “Do not be afraid of anything!”

Reference:

EXCELLENCE HUB FOR A SMART AGRICULTURE AND CIRCULAR BIOECONOMY TOWARDS A SUSTAINABLE AGRIFOOD SECTOR IN WIDENING COUNTRIES (AND BEYOND)

AGRI-BIOCIRCULAR-HUB

Duration of the project: 1 January 2025 – 31 December 2028

Funded under: Widening participation and spreading excellence

Coordinated by: LVIV POLYTECHNIC NATIONAL UNIVERSITY (Ukraine)

📎Photos taken from the website of the Lviv Polytechnic National University