Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona

On 16 October, the SESAME Project (Supporting Entrepreneurship and Agricultural Know-How in Metropolitan Areas) was officially kicked off in a transnational meeting in Marseilles (France). The aim of the project, in which the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB) participates, is to encourage agricultural entrepreneurship in metropolitan areas.

It is funded by the European Union's  Erasmus+ programme, as part of key action 2: "Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices".

To implement the project, the partners, on the one hand, want to design specific training content for level 4 agricultural vocational programmes, which will teach students about the particular characteristics of agricultural entrepreneurship in metropolitan areas. With this, the aim is to raise awareness among students in medium and higher level vocational training programmes of the particular characteristics of urban and peri-urban agriculture from an ecological (greener cities), economic (short food supply chain) and social (social inclusion) perspective. On the other, they also want to raise awareness among public representatives and project managers of the importance of entrepreneurial agricultural projects (and, by extension, territorialised food systems) in urban and peri-urban areas. Efforts are focused on increasing agricultural projects in metropolitan areas.

Within the AMB, this project will be implemented in cooperation between the Green Infrastructure Service and the departments of International Relations and Social and Economic Development. Other participants include the Government of Catalonia's Agricultural Training Service, through the Amposta Agricultural School, and the Catalan company Eduscopi, which specialises in scientific communication and education and the dissemination of scientific knowledge. Other European partners include: IRFEDD (Regional Institute for Environment and Sustainable Development Training); AVITEM; Unis Vert - a network of agricultural vocational training centres in southern France; Marseille Métropole (Metropolitan Area of Marseilles); Istituti Tecnici Emilia Romagna; and the Metropolitan City of Bologna (with the Insieme per il Lavoro programme).

The next transnational meeting, in which the content generated by the working groups will be validated, will be coordinated by the AMB and take place in Barcelona in March 2020.