The overall goal of BRANCHES is to foster knowledge transfer and innovation in agriculture, forestry and rural areas, enhancing the viability and competitiveness of biomass supply chains and promoting innovative technologies, rural bioeconomy solutions, and sustainable agricultural and forest management.

This will be achieved by applying a participatory, multi-actor approach which engages relevant stakeholders across the various targeted value chains, combined with a strong dissemination, exploitation and communication strategy which will share the activities and results of BRANCHES. This will ultimately result in improved energy efficiency within biomass supply chains, and the energy self-sufficiency of farms will be improved, while energy-related costs will be minimized.

Research on creating a strong, self-sufficient, circular and sustainable bioeconomy has accelerated during the last ten years and a vast amount of knowledge has been generated. However, due to the multiple sectors and complex value chains involved, a significant part of that valuable information is in danger of remaining untapped, due to insufficient communication between experts on these advances, and practitioners, i.e. the potential end-users of this knowledge, such as farmers, foresters and entrepreneurs. The practitioners are expected to supply raw materials and endorse the strengthening of a sustainable bioeconomy as a major aspect of rural development in their regions, but require improved networks such as those developed in BRANCHES, in order to facilitate knowledge exchange and uptake.