Future­FoodS: Call 2

The Future­FoodS Part­ner­ship is one of eight cofunded part­ner­ships launched by the EC under Cluster 6 of Hori­zon Europe to drive green and digit­al trans­itions. While the part­ner­ships AGROE­CO­LOGY, EUPAHW, SBEP and AgData also look at vari­ous aspects of agri­cul­tur­al and food pro­duc­tion, the Future­FoodS part­ner­ship has a clear focus on food post-harvest.

The vis­ion of the Future­FoodS Part­ner­ship is to col­lect­ively achieve envir­on­ment­ally friendly, socially secure and fair, eco­nom­ic­ally viable, healthy and safe food sys­tems in Europe by 2050.

This is based on three iden­ti­fied pri­or­ity needs:
1) The need for trans­form­a­tion of the cur­rent types of pro­duc­tion, pro­cessing, dis­tri­bu­tion, and con­sump­tion in lin­ear food chains towards cir­cu­lar food sys­tems func­tion­ing with­in plan­et­ary bound­ar­ies;
2) The need for an over­arch­ing food sys­tems approach to address sev­er­al chal­lenges in an integ­rat­ive man­ner and empower­ing all rel­ev­ant stake­hold­ers, diverse voices and geo­graph­ic­al regions;
3) The need for food that is safe, sus­tain­able, healthy and from fair and trus­ted value chains for everyone.

The Future­FoodS Part­ner­ship aims to gen­er­ate impact (sum­mar­ized in Gen­er­al & Spe­cif­ic Object­ives)
through a com­bin­a­tion of inter­re­lated activ­it­ies like case stud­ies in liv­ing labs, agen­das for research,
innov­a­tion, policy-sci­ence top­ics and edu­ca­tion and joint transna­tion­al calls for research and innov­a­tion
(R&I) pro­pos­als across four them­at­ic areas:
i. ​‘Change the way we eat’;
ii. ​‘Change the way we pro­cess and sup­ply food’;
iii. ​‘Change the way we con­nect with food sys­tems’ and
iv. ​‘Change the way we gov­ern food systems.

Its poten­tial impact is closely related to the capa­city to align act­ors of the food sys­tem around the goals iden­ti­fied by the European Green Deal and the UN´s SDGs and to quanti­fy con­tri­bu­tions to the object­ives in the Farm to Fork Strategy as well as the FOOD2030 agenda and the Commission´s vis­ion for the Future of Farm­ing and Food pro­duc­tion in the EU. The Future­FoodS bene­fi­ciar­ies rep­res­ent 83 part­ners from 22 EU Mem­ber States, six asso­ci­ated coun­tries and one third coun­try — 29 coun­tries in total.

The incor­por­a­tion of research act­ors from social sci­ences and human­it­ies, of policy makers and the involve­ment of extern­al experts and stake­hold­ers ensures the con­sid­er­a­tion of mul­tiple per­spect­ives, needs and exper­i­ences in the plan­ning and imple­ment­a­tion of Future­FoodS activities. 

This clearly reflects the partnership´s mis­sion to mobil­ize R&I to accel­er­ate the trans­ition towards sus­tain­able food sys­tems with a wide range of act­ors, who are join­ing forces in this partnership.