INNOVATION 2: A collective trademark to promote local products

What it is: 

The story of Ici.C.Local begins in 2008. The municipality of Grabels (34) decides to create a market to revitalize its town centre and calls on INRAE (UMR Innovation Montpellier). Faced with the mistrust of some consumers regarding the origin of the products, the elected official in charge of the market comes up with the idea of using pricetags‑ on the stalls to provide more information. Ici.C.Local is created to highlight locally produced goods from shortsupply‑ chains, and it is filed at the INPI in 2014 as a collective trademark, governed by a usage regulation.  After ten years of experimentation in Grabels, Ici.C.Local expands to the Hérault, Aveyron, Var, Gard, Ardèche, and HauteGaronne‑ departments. Today, Ici.C.Local is coordinated at the national level by INRAE UMR Innovation and relies on national and local partners to ensure its deployment (more information here).

Origin:

• Maintain/reinforce human/social connections and trust in local food value chains
• Reinforce the transparency of products’ origin
• Avoid elitism in the decision-making process when choosing local products

Actions developed during the project:

• Colour coding of the products to inform their origin
• Collective management involving producers, sellers, local authority, consumers to build a vision of what is sustainable 

Inspiration for the Aude Demontration Site (and other Demo Sites):

• Raising awareness on local production without excluding some producers and consumers
• Participatory guarantee scheme to involve people