NOLDE ERWIN

Their core work

NOLDE ERWIN is a German private entity working at the intersection of urban food systems and participatory city planning. Their work focuses on integrating edible city solutions — practical food-growing interventions in urban environments — into broader city governance and community life. Across two European Innovation Actions, they contributed specialist knowledge on how cities and regions can redesign food systems to be more socially resilient and ecologically productive. Their involvement in citizen science frameworks suggests they work not just on food infrastructure but on how residents engage with, and co-shape, urban food environments.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In their first H2020 project (EdiCitNet, 2018), the focus was tightly on edible city solutions — physical and community-based interventions that introduce food production into urban spaces. By the time FoodE began in 2020, the framing had broadened substantially: from specific edible city interventions toward the systemic level of city and regional food governance, and toward citizen science as a method for co-producing knowledge with residents. The trajectory is a clear move from implementation-focused urban greening toward participatory, systems-level food policy research.

They are moving from hands-on edible city projects toward a broader, policy-oriented role in urban food system design — a direction that is increasingly relevant for city authorities, food system planners, and Horizon Europe missions on soil and food.

How they like to work

NOLDE ERWIN has never led a project, participating exclusively as a consortium partner across both H2020 grants. Despite this, they have accumulated 63 unique partners across 16 countries — figures more typical of highly active consortium members embedded in large, multi-city Innovation Actions. This suggests they bring a recognized specialist contribution that large European networks actively recruit, rather than building and leading their own consortia.

With 63 unique consortium partners across 16 countries from just two projects, NOLDE ERWIN's network is disproportionately large for their portfolio size — both EdiCitNet and FoodE are multi-city, pan-European Innovation Actions with wide partner bases. Their geographic reach extends well beyond Germany, covering much of the EU's urban food research community.

What sets them apart

NOLDE ERWIN occupies a specific niche at the crossroads of urban agriculture, food systems governance, and participatory research — a combination that is rare among German private companies in H2020. Unlike academic partners in the same consortia, they likely bring practitioner or consulting expertise that grounds theoretical food systems work in city-level reality. For a consortium building a Horizon Europe project on urban food, sustainable cities, or civic science, they offer a German private-sector perspective that complements the university-heavy composition typical of such networks.

Highlights from their portfolio

• FoodE
  The larger of the two grants (EUR 224,857) and the more conceptually expansive project, addressing food systems at the city-region scale with citizen science methods — the strongest signal of their current positioning.
• EdiCitNet
  Their entry into H2020, as part of a flagship European network on edible cities — a project that established their profile in the urban food and green infrastructure community.