In English

Sweet Oats - Vitality from Heritage Grains (SweetOats)

SweetOats is a three-year (2025-2027) development project. The project seeks solutions to diversify the oat varieties cultivated in Finland, utilizing landraces and old commercial varieties. The project has five WPs:

The project promotes the cultivation of landrace oats and old varieties suitable for organic production and cultivation in a changing climate. By encouraging farmers to produce heritage grain oat and old varieties, biodiversity and national security of food supply are strengthened and the trend towards monopolization of farming is reversed. At the farm level, economic value can also be obtained in the form of special products, for example, further processed foods or animal fodder as part of the specialization of enterprises.

The introduction of landrace oat and old oat varieties into cultivation requires information about the characteristics and cultivation requirements of the varieties. In addition to collecting scattered historical old information, the project will compile new information related to changed cultivation conditions and usage needs. The information will be shared in a variety of ways at events and online. The information of traits and sorts will be collected on a common website at www.viljalaari.fi and will also be shared in journals, as fact cards and in the form of an e-book. The project will organize webinars and national and international events. Information production and exchange in the networks will take place in Finnish, Swedish and English. The primary target group of the project is organic farmers and the farmer network propagating heritage grains and old varieties. The network has approximately one hundred members. The beneficiaries are all farmers, food processors, researchers, teachers in the field,

The coordinator of the project is Häme University of Applied Sciences, the other participants are the Natural Resources Institute Finland and Novia University of Applied Sciences. The project is nationwide and the implementation period is 1.9.2025-31.12.2027. The project is an information and communication project.