KMETIJSKO GOZDARSKA ZBORNICA SLOVENIJE KMETIJSKO GOZDARSKI ZAVOD MURSKA SOBOTA

Their core work

KGZS - Zavod MS is the regional agricultural and forestry advisory institute for the Pomurje region of northeastern Slovenia, a branch of the national Agricultural and Forestry Chamber of Slovenia. Their core work is providing practical extension services to farmers and rural enterprises — field-level advisory, demonstration of farming practices, and connecting local producers to innovation and market opportunities. In EU research projects, they contribute as a ground-truth partner: they bring real farming communities, regional field trial capacity, and direct channels to agricultural practitioners that purely academic partners lack. Their H2020 participation places them squarely in agri-food value chain transformation — helping translate research-level sustainability concepts into farm-level and supply-chain-level practice.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their first project (Ploutos, 2020) placed them in the conceptual sustainability space — sustainable innovation frameworks, collaborative business models, and behavioral change among food chain actors. By their second project (ZeroW, 2022), the focus had shifted toward systemic change, data infrastructure (data spaces), and policy recommendations, with an explicit just transition framing. This is a clear move from innovation methodology to practical digital tools and food system governance — from asking "how do we make farmers adopt new practices?" to "how do we redesign the system and the data flows that govern it?"

They are moving from participatory sustainability frameworks toward digital data infrastructure and policy-level food system change — making them an increasingly relevant partner for Horizon Europe projects targeting the Farm-to-Fork strategy and agri-food data spaces.

How they like to work

KGZS - Zavod MS participates exclusively as a consortium member, never as project coordinator — consistent with their role as a regional practitioner bringing field access rather than project management capacity. Both their projects were large Innovation Actions with broad European consortia, which accounts for their unusually high partner count (81 unique partners across just 2 projects). This means working with them grants access to Slovenian agricultural networks and a credible regional demonstration site, but they will not drive project administration or lead work packages.

Despite only two projects, KGZS - Zavod MS has built connections with 81 unique partners across 20 countries — a remarkably wide network for an organization of this size, reflecting the large-consortium structure of the Innovation Actions they joined. Their network is pan-European in breadth but anchored in agricultural and food system research communities.

What sets them apart

KGZS - Zavod MS fills a gap that is genuinely hard to fill from within academia: direct, institutional access to farming communities and agricultural practitioners in a specific Central European region. Pomurje is one of Slovenia's most agriculturally intensive regions, making the institute a credible demonstration and dissemination partner for projects that need to show real-world adoption rather than lab results. For consortia building projects under Farm-to-Fork or the EU food waste agenda, having a regional chamber-affiliated institute on board signals societal relevance and eases stakeholder engagement requirements.

Highlights from their portfolio

• ZeroW
  The larger of their two projects (EUR 120,000 EC contribution, 2022-2025), targeting one of the EU's highest-profile food policy goals — zero food waste — with an explicitly systemic and data infrastructure approach that positions the institute at the intersection of digital transformation and food system governance.
• Ploutos
  Their entry into H2020 (2020-2023) placed them in a data-driven agri-food value chain project that combined behavioral economics, collaborative business models, and digital innovation — an unusually multi-dimensional first project for a regional advisory institute.