What Are Research and Innovation Needs for Sustainable Food Systems? Insights from a Portfolio Analysis of EU Funded Projects

Sustainable food systems provide and promote safe, nutritious, and healthy food, and aim at generating multiple social, economic, and environmental benefits. Both European Union (EU) and Member States are allocating increasing agricultural research budgets to fund Research and Innovation (R&I) actions fostering food systems transformation and adopting a food systems approach. This portfolio analysis of 30 EU-funded projects contributes to the identification of R&I needs in the field of sustainable food systems analysis. The study, funded by the European Commission (EC), was realized in collaboration with the Standing Committee on Agricultural Research Strategic Working Group on Food Systems (SCAR FS SWG) to feed the development of a new Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) and a Sustainable Food Systems Partnership (SFS Partnership) that has taken the name of FutureFoods. As a main outcome, the paper presents a list of R&I topics that require more research and policy efforts and it highlights the need to develop specific supporting actions. The SRIA and SFS Partnership will help to re-orient programmes to concrete research needs, to reduce overlaps, and to build synergies between past and future efforts, in line with relevant EU policy goals and strategic frameworks. The identification of food systems R&I needs provide useful guidelines for public and private stakeholders to enhance R&I projects.