High Value Nature grazing in NATURA 2000 areas for meat product quality improvement and innovation in product distribution at the GR-BG cross-border area - BorderGraze

High Nature Value (HNV) livestock grazing is a tool for the conservation of grassland and open bush ecosystems as well as for the prevention of their transformation into closed bush and/ or forest areas. Thus, it is an internationally recognized and applied management practice in areas of high environmental value such as NATURA 2000 sites and other protected areas. At the same time, HNV livestock grazing is an invigoration catalyst for local economy which can produce high quality products with added ecological value. The proposed project aims in creating an innovative  framework for the sustainable management of HNV grazing and pasture lands at the cross-border area. The business challenge of the proposed project targets on revealing the potential to monetize the environmental value of HNV meat products and increase their profitability for the two beneficiary companies. Thus, BorderGraze puts emphasis on the enhancement of the added value as well as on innovative marketing of meat products from HNV grazing systems and areas. The investment is expected to benefit both beneficiary companies by increasing their competitiveness on a cross-border level and their access on new crossborder markets mainly by increasing their sales and their products/ services added value through innovative supply and marketing chains. In a nutshell the investment and its associated innovation is expected to help the beneficiaries achieve better prices and lower costs due to joint marketing efforts and access to pro-environmental (“green”) business markets which rely on good quality natural resources.