Established in 2006, Highclere Consulting (HCC) provides high-quality consultancy, training and policy analysis services for governmental and non-governmental organizations working on agricultural, rural development and environmental issues in Southeast Europe and beyond.

In the 17 years of experience, HCC has been part of various Horizon 2020  projects (SALSA, AGRILINK, LIAISON, FoodSHIFT2030, MOVING, EUREKA, FARMWELL), collaborating with more than 50 partners on the topics of social sciences research, technical assistance and policy analysis, rural networking and facilitation and training.

Considering their passion and curiosity for rural development, small-scale farming, small farmers, healthy food and smart communities, HCC joined the VISIONARY project, which aims to make Europe’s food provision more sustainable. Within the project, the HCC teams lead the development of the Dissemination, Exploitation and Communication plan (Task 1.1), and Task 6.4 Capacity building of policymakers and value chain actors, part of VISIONARY’s Science-Policy Interfaces (SPI). The project will invest considerable resources into building the capacity of SPIs participants on two levels (1) social capacity building: to build mutual understanding, respect and trust (2) technical capacity building through user-friendly technical briefings and a glossary of terms.

HCC is also leading Task 6.5 Capacity building of researchers. The task is devoted to helping young researchers.  Furthermore, within the work package dedicated to value chain initiatives and business models, HCC team will research and provide insights into two case studies focused on the Local Gastronomic Points concept and Short Supply Chains in Romania.