CONFEDERAZIONE NAZIONALE COLDIRETTI

Their core work

Coldiretti is Italy's largest farmers' association, representing over 1.5 million agricultural enterprises. In H2020 projects, they serve as the voice of Italian farming — providing real-world farmer perspectives, facilitating field trials on member farms, and ensuring research outputs are practical and adoptable. Their contribution bridges the gap between laboratory innovation and on-farm reality, covering food chain sustainability, digital agriculture adoption, integrated pest management, and farmer wellbeing.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Coldiretti's early H2020 involvement (2016-2018) centered on traditional agricultural policy concerns: food chain sustainability, small farm viability, and procurement policy (Strength2Food, SALSA). From 2018 onward, their focus shifted decisively toward digital transformation of agriculture — smart farming, IoT, Digital Innovation Hubs, and data-driven decision support (SmartAgriHubs, DEMETER, IPM Decisions). Their most recent project (FARMWELL, 2021) signals a new interest in the human side of farming: mental health and social innovation for farmers.

Coldiretti is moving from food policy advocacy toward enabling digital adoption among farmers while increasingly addressing farmer welfare — expect future interest in AgriTech uptake, data governance, and rural social innovation.

How they like to work

Coldiretti always participates as a partner, never as coordinator, consistent with their role as a farmers' representative organization rather than a research performer. They work in large, multi-country consortia (287 unique partners across 36 countries), bringing farmer networks and real-world validation capacity. Their modest funding shares (averaging ~EUR 103K per project) suggest they contribute advisory input, farmer engagement, and dissemination rather than heavy technical R&D.

Exceptionally broad network of 287 unique consortium partners across 36 countries, reflecting participation in large-scale pan-European agricultural and digital projects. Their reach spans virtually all EU member states plus associated countries.

What sets them apart

Coldiretti represents the largest organized farmer base in Italy, giving consortium partners direct access to over a million agricultural enterprises for field testing, surveys, and technology adoption studies. Unlike universities or research institutes, they bring the end-user perspective — what farmers actually need, what they will adopt, and what policy barriers exist. For any project that needs real-farm validation or farmer engagement at scale in Italy, Coldiretti is the natural partner.

Highlights from their portfolio

• SmartAgriHubs
  Large-scale digital agriculture platform (EUR 103K to Coldiretti) connecting Digital Innovation Hubs across Europe — positioned Coldiretti at the center of AgriTech adoption.
• Strength2Food
  Largest single funding to Coldiretti (EUR 225K) and their first H2020 project, focused on food chain sustainability through quality and procurement policy.
• FARMWELL
  Most recent project addressing an unconventional topic for an agricultural body — farmer mental health and wellbeing through social innovation.