The Food Province of Finland is the name under which the South Ostrobotnian food-related actors work and co-operate.
The province of South Ostrobothnia is very significant food actor in Finland. The province is widely known of its spacious landscapes shaped by field production and its people’s entrepreneurial mindset. Straight-forwardness, honesty and proudness are the three base stones of these people, who produces and process much more food than is consumed within the own area.
This combination has led to vivid business within the whole food chain. Also the supporting actions such education, research, innovation, governing and advisory work is going strong in the area.
Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences has put special effort ecucational programs for farming, food hospitality management and biotechnical engineering. It also has the biggesta food sector development group in the province. The different universities of Finland have based their researchers to the Food Province to do food-related research in the area. The capital of The Food Province, Seinäjoki, has allocated a significant part of its development company’s actions to food-related issues. Many food-related actors and actions are ”big, beautiful and brave” according to the spirit of the Food Province.
Based on the good food production and business conditions there are big and small scale processing industry in the province. The biggest company is Atria concern with its meat and convenience food plants. Valio concern works with milk and related plant-based products. There are about 5300 different food businesses (data 2020) from farm to fork working in the province of 190.000 people.
The goals of the Leader’s forum are to lead to mutual development work of the Food Province and influence and follow strategies and programs that have an effect on the Food Province actors. One of the strategies is ”The Food Province 2030 – The Best Place for Food Business” strategy. Also as a positive side effect, it serves as a platform of networking and finding new partnershops within the South Ostrobothnian actors.
Food Province’s Leaders’ Forum and its core group lead the mutual co-operation among the food sector. They are network based groups, where the actual Leaders’ Forum is open for all South Ostrobotnian actors.
The Core Group of the Leader’s Forum is formed by voluntaring organizations, which are willing to commit and allocate resources to co-operation. It does the daily background organizing work for the Leaders’ Forum and serves as the ECCP cluster background organization as soon as the cluster status is accomplished. The Core Group members work based on their mutual written contract. The members are (from 2024-)
These groups are permanent and are not funded by projects. You may contact Kaisa Mäkelä to learn more about the groups’ work.
The Food Province’s Leaders’ Forum’s Core Group has made a decision to sing into the European Cluster Portal in 2024 and fullfill the requirements to do so. The work will be finished in the first half of the year 2025.
All the food-related actors in South Ostrobothnia are invited to join the cluster.
In addition, there is a former mutual cluster contract among some food businesses in South Ostrobothnia and they are to be invited to update the cluster collaboration to a newer contract with a bigger number of actors.
The Food Province of Finland Cluster offers following services
This sub-page is created in the project ”Kekseliäs ja Ketterä Ruokaprovinssi” funded partially by the European Union. Project Partners are ProAgria South Ostrobothnia / Rural Women’s Advisory Centre, Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences and Helsinki University Ruralia Institute.
Sivuston ylläpito: Valakia