BASCIL: Innovative solutions for food production in rural areas with the aim of diversifying sustainable culinary tourism services

About the project

BASCIL is an international cooperation project involving 15 partners from 8 countries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Norway, Finland and Sweden). The project partners representing Latvia are the association “Zemnieku Saeima” and the rural tourism association “Lauku ceļotājs”.

Small producers in rural areas have experienced an economic downturn caused by the pandemic. Producers are currently facing higher production costs due to rising energy prices and inflation. All of the above has had a strong impact on the resilience of the local food sector in the Baltic Sea region.

According to statistics from the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the culinary tourism industry is experiencing rapid growth worldwide. Local residents in the Baltic Sea region are also increasingly interested in products produced by local farmers, food and gastrotourism. To keep up with the growing trend, the tourism market has created a demand for more attractive culinary tourism offers and services. In Europe, the Baltic Sea region is an increasingly unknown culinary tourism destination. The active involvement of food producers in the tourism sector is a great opportunity to make their offers more visible and more attractive to guests.

Project objective

The BASCIL project aims to develop culinary tourism services in rural areas of the Baltic Sea Region and improve the resilience of local food producers by diversifying their business activities in the tourism sector.

International cooperation

It is important to gather and analyze the existing knowledge and practices in the region. Then it is possible to create sustainability and comprehensive solutions to reduce risks for different local food producers and networks in the Baltic Sea Region. By solving similar problems and jointly analyzing different opportunities, strengths and weaknesses, a synergy is created that allows creating a common (but flexible) solution for these target groups.

The project results are publicly available and applicable to a wider group of food producers interested in business diversification.

Pilot regions and networks from each country are included in the project. Latvia is represented as pilot partners by the cooperative “Provinces products” (contact person Agnese Arne-Štencele, provincesprodukti@gmail.com, +37128633520) and “Sabiles sidrs” (contact person Baiba Circene, info@sabilessidrs.lv, +37129470405), thus representing the Latvian “Cider Road”.

The project implementation period is 01.01.2023 – 31.12.2025.

Project total budget (8 countries, 15 partners) is EUR 3,388,965.55, of which the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) support is EUR 3,026,928.75

Contact information: Aira Odinga, aira@zsa.lv, tel. 29233095