In November 2022, three women were awarded sub-grants from CESIE, InnovAgroWoMed's Italian partner in Sicily. 

Thanks to these active women and the financial support of InnovAgroWomed, the following start-ups have been launched: AgroMini by Eleonora Chiri, A’Naca – Agri Bike Camping by Alice Quattrocchi and Nivura by Irene Russo.

Let’s get to know their entrepreneurial projects !!

AgroMini will be a catalyst for regenerative agriculture in Sicily, providing consulting services, monitoring and training activities for the new generation of farmers.

With this aim, the business model is shaped around three main components:
•    Training offer for agricultural businesses aimed at promoting the knowledge and implementation of field practices of regenerative agriculture and of protection and improvement of the quality of the soil;
•    Customised consulting and guidance during the transition phase towards regenerative agriculture through design and monitoring activities in close cooperation with the business clients;
•    Facilitate the sale of certified carbon credits in the international market of carbon credits.

A’Naca – Agri Bike Camping will bring together Agri-tourism and bike-tourism enriching the rural hospitality in the Valley D’Agro in Messina, Sicily, with the offer of trekking and biking and the sale of agricultural products from their own production.

Addressing mostly hikers, bikers, and nature-lovers, A’NACA aims to offer a place of wellbeing, combining the idea of comfort with the one of rural tourism.
The Agri-bike camping will be in a non-intensive farm, in an unpolluted and less densely populated area. Moreover, it will be a bicycle repair shop where the travel bikers can leave, do the upkeep and repair their bicycles.

Nivura will bring innovation in the beekeeping sector, combining the urban apiculture with the high-tech precision agriculture, respecting the cycles of the nature. One of the crucial importance of this business idea is the recovery of the Sicilian black bee (Apis mellifera sicula), a subspecies at risk of extinction that has its natural habit in the Province of Palermo and Trapani.

Moreover, the offer of products (a variety of honey, pollen and propolis) will be linked with the proposal of training activities, business consulting together with the plans ‘Adopt a beehive’.

Nivura proposes an ethical and different alternative to the bee sector, focusing on the peculiarity of the flora and fauna endemic of the Sicilian territory. 

The training path of the InnovAgroWoMed project started in September 2021. A year later, we at CESIE, are proud to support the birth of these new businesses run by women who want to revive rural areas of Sicily and who will also receive technical support in the coming months. 

Follow with us their path. We will tell you what to do sustainable business in Sicily means!