Occitanum brings together 46 regional actors in agriculture and the agrifood sector, including the Occitanie Region and the the project is a winner of the "Territoires d'Innovation" Grand Plan d'Investissement, Banque des Territoires.

Occitanum is supported by INRAE based on its expertise in Digital Agriculture and the territorial approach, and by a group comprised of the Chambres d’Agriculture, the Agriculture Cooperative Federation, local authorities, the Higher Education and Research Agronomy institute - Montpellier SupAgro, the technical institutes, the Competitivity cluster called AgriSudOuest Innovation and the firm E2L. In the Open Labs, each site organizes its specific governance to conceive and support Innovative Projects.

To foster the emergence of innovative projects, Calls for Expressions of Interest (CMIs) will be set up and aimed at AgTech companies that wish to engage in these open innovation approaches. Each Innovative Project will be governed by an agreement that brings together the actors involved in Occitanum.  

The Partners:

Several groups of actors are involved in Occitanum: local authorities, users, farmers' and consumers' groups, development and transfer experts, researchers, teachers and facilitators:

Research - Education - Transfer

Research is an actor within territorial innovation projects and thus contributes to strengthening the link between science and society. They ensure the scientific rigour of the approach, the implementation of protocols to evaluate the use values and performances of technologies as well as their environmental, economic and social impacts on the territory.

In addition, they build the information systems needed to capitalise on the data collected, and will use them to evaluate the technologies, extract new knowledge on the agro-ecological transition and on the innovation system, thus contributing to the sustainability and replicability of the project in Occitania and elsewhere.

The project coordinator, the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment, is mobilising researchers from the INRAE Occitanie-Montpellier and INRAE Occitanie-Toulouse centres.