Strategies for adapting food processes to climate change: transforming olive waste into valuable resources

Adapting food processes to climate change through the waste-to-resource concept involves transforming food waste into bioenergy, organic fertilisers and bioplastics, using microbial processing for by-product conversion, and adopting sustainable packaging solutions. Other strategies include composting organic waste to improve soil quality, recovering energy from waste through anaerobic digestion, utilising resilient and underutilised crops and optimising supply chains with digital tools to reduce food loss. These approaches promote a circular economy, enhance food security, reduce environmental impact and foster climate resilience in food systems. Farmers are adjusting their practices to cope with the challenge, but many of these solutions remain confined to specific regions or agricultural sectors. The EU-funded CLIMED-FRUIT project is working to bridge this gap by collecting and sharing innovative, climate-adaptive practices from various European agricultural groups to enhance resilience and promote effective climate change adaptation and mitigation. This article presents a non-exhaustive list of experimental results from experiences and research carried out across Europe and identified in the framework of the CLIMED-FRUIT project.