Description (EN): Warmer growing conditions, improved varieties and technologies, and concerns about sustainability are creating new opportunities in northern areas for greater cereal production. In few areas, it has already been possible to produce higher value cereals for milling and malting which has allowed SMEs to develop new “local” products to meet a growing demand from tourists and residents. The challenge faced is to help all partners benefit from these opportunities while taking into account the different levels of development of cereal cultivation across the partner regions.The project objectives are to increase cereal growing in the partner areas and to increase the growing of higher value cereals for local food and drink products. The main outputs from the project will be increased numbers of farmers growing cereals for feed, malting or milling and the production of higher value cereal products like seed, malt, food and beverages. These changes will increase employment, income and consumer choice in rural areas. The main beneficiaries will be growers and their local communities, SMEs and consumers.Individually, none of the project partners have the skills or resources to carry out the project alone and therefore the novel approach being adopted is to pool the experiences and specialisations of the partners together with their associates to collectively address constraints and knowledge transfer across the supply chain – from planting the crop to the development of new food and drink products. Expected Results (EN): Degree of collaborations between SMEs and R&D Expected Outputs (EN): The project will develop cereal production in new northern areas and introduce or expand higher value markets for local cereals in areas where cultivation is already happening. Key to this process will be collaborations and the transfer of knowledge between the project’s 22 associate partners (mostly SMEs) and 6 R&D partners in the different regions. A larger number of SMEs will benefit from the project, through stakeholder group forums and links developed during the project with various umbrella organisations within agriculture and food industry. The Icelandic partners have contacts with the 440 farmers growing cereals. The number of farmers growing cereals in all participating regions is about 950 and communication with the majority is expected. One of the Icelandic associate partners is the Federation of Icelandic Industries having 70 member companies. Companies outsite the federation have already been identified in a preparatory project. In Orkney, the National Farmers Union will provide a point of contact, with branch meetings regularly attracting 30-60 members. In areas where there is little cereal cultivation (parts of northern Iceland, northern Norway, Faroes and Newfoundland) the skills, knowledge and varieties required for local production will be transferred to farming enterprises by the partners so that more feed can be produced locally and dependence on imports is reduced. Methods of crop processing will also be addressed so that farmers are able to store and use local feed over the winter. Within the project partnership there is already the knowledge-base and strong links with growers to facilitate this.Some of the partner regions (e.g. Orkney and parts of Iceland) already produce small quantities of cereals for higher value purposes (e.g malting, milling, and farm seed) and have accumulated valuable specialist knowledge and experience related to this in areas like field management, machinery and equipment, grain quality criteria, and development of supply chains. Through knowledge exchange activities in the project this expertise will be made available to collaborators in other areas enabling them also to develop higher value markets and saving many years of “trial and error”.