DAIRITAL is born from the common and inter-territorial needs in technological and agri-food innovation of the traditional production and processing sectors of the dairy industry in the SUDOE territory. Consisting of micro-enterprises or SMEs at risk of disappearance, the sector is located in rural inland areas, so the project will allow to promote the implementation of sustainable digitized production models in these regions. A Transnational Strategy will collect multidisciplinary solutions identified experimentally that will be brought to a real scale in pilot actions (dairy farms with or without their own cheese production) in SMEs in the rural SUDOE environment. Thus, the real economic, social and environmental impact of implementing the potential solutions to achieve sustainable and digital dairy production systems will be evaluated. Finally, from the knowledge obtained in the pilot actions, a Transnational Action Plan will be developed, whose main mission will be the dissemination of the knowledge generated. Along with a wide range of activities to guarantee transferability, the Plan will be a support tool for the final beneficiaries to facilitate the implementation of the sustainable and/or digital solutions optimized in the project. The solutions proposed in DAIRITAL seek to maximize the productive efficiency in a sustainable and digital way for these SMEs in the SUDOE territory by promoting: 1) the circular economy (reuse of endogenous waste and food waste); 2) the implementation of sustainable agri-food technologies (production and transformation systems); 3) digitalization (information technology, spectroscopic technologies); and 4) specialized training. The inter-territorial and multidisciplinary consortium, formed by 3 R&D&i centers, 1 SME, 3 associations and 1 governmental entity with links to the sector, thus expects to improve the market positioning and employment prospects of the rural primary and secondary dairy sector, attracting youth entrepreneurship and preventing the aging and depopulation of the rural inland territories of the SUDOE regions.
