The vision of FutureFoodS is to collectively achieve environmentally-friendly, socially secure, fair and economically viable healthy and safe Food Systems (FS) for Europe. FutureFoodS gather 87 partners from 22 EU Member States, 6 Associated Countries and 1 third country. FutureFoodS includes public and private actors, policy makers, foundations, locally, sub-nationally, nationally, EU-widely. All these FutureFoodS partners are fully aligned on the vision for the Partnership and the methodology for its implementation in line with SDG17 and EU Green Deal components. This vision has been broken down into general (GO), specific (SO) and operational (OO) objectives applying across the 4 R&I areas and 4 transversal activities identified by the FutureFoods consortium in its stable draft Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) which constitutes the strategic backbone of the project. The four GO cover: GO1 - Functioning of FS; GO2 - System approaches; GO3 - Inclusive government; GO4 - Co-creation cases. These GO have then been translated into SO prioritised in line with the timescale and resources of the Partnership: SO1 - Change the way we eat; SO2- Change the way we process and supply food, SO3 - Change the way we connect with FSs and SO4 - Change the way we govern FS. In addition, 6 interconnected OO have been set: OO1- Pooling R&I resources and programming; OO2 - Operational FS Observatory; OO3 - Active FS knowledge Hub of FS Labs; OO4 - Functioning knowledge sharing and scaling mechanisms; OO5- Revisiting the SRIA; OO6 - Promoting, supporting, widening & gathering FS various communities. The objectives implemented in the 8 WPs of FutureFoodS will exert impact directly or indirectly in most of the destinations of Horizon Europe’s Cluster 6 2023-2024 work programme and particularly for the topic destination ‘Fair, healthy and environment-friendly FS from primary production to consumption’ echoing to the main EU and World FS policies & strategies.

The aim of the ERA-GAS Cofund is to strengthen the transnational coordination of research programmes and provide added value to research and innovation on greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation in the European Research Area. ERA-GAS will organise a single joint transnational call for proposals with cofunding from the European Commission (EC). In addition, ERA-GAS will undertake additional joint activities including at least one other joint call without EC cofunding. By pooling national money and funding projects at a European/international level, ERA-GAS will achieve a critical mass for funding GHG research, thereby reducing duplication, harmonising research effort and making more efficient use of limited resources. Greater cooperation will enhance innovation capacity in the European Research Area and encourage the development of enabling solutions to reduce GHG emissions and improve inventories. ERA-GAS will work closely with other ERA-NETs and reinforce existing collaborations between actors in the research area (e.g. via FACCE-JPI and the GRA). A plan will also be drawn up for future collaborative actions to ensure that enhanced cooperation will be maintained past the lifetime of the ERA-NET. Through collaboration in this ERA-NET and additional joint activities, partners in the consortium will exchange experience and gain insight into other national/regional research programmes. This will help managers to follow best practice in terms of implementing international funding calls and harmonise research and policy agendas across nations. The objectives of ERA-GAS will directly address the scope of the Work Programme by incentivising participating countries to commit resources towards the development of a sustainable, innovative and more GHG efficient bioeconomy in Europe. This transnational effort is urgently required to develop mitigation solutions, refine reporting mechanisms and design policy instruments necessary to tackle this key global environmental challenge.

The aim of SUSFOOD2 is to foster research and innovation in the field of sustainable food systems through enhanced cooperation and coordination between EU member and associated states. It will thereby contribute to the overall EU objective of building the European Research Area as well as a newly emerging Food Research Area. Major challenges will influence future food chains asking for innovative solutions to - respond to increased demand for food by increasing production sustainably (Food and Nutrition Security) - make optimal use of resources while mitigating impact on the environment - reducing losses and waste - follow a whole food chain approach from production to consumption - improving competitiveness of the European agri-food-business SUSFOOD2 focusses on sustainability in post-harvest food production, thus covering relevant fields from natural sciences to food engineering and social sciences. Building on the achievements of its predecessor in FP7, SUSFOOD2 Cofund will strengthen efforts to support and fund excellent research in the food area by one co-funded call of around 11.4 Mio. €. The consortium also aims at implementing other additional activities in a three-fold approach: i) strengthening networking and knowledge transfer among various stakeholders (i.e. by workshops, stakeholder events etc.) ii) additional funding activities without EU co-fund (preferably linked with other initiatives) iii) implementation and further advancement of the SUSFOOD SRA (developed in FP7) With the outlined approach SUSFOOD2 will contribute to - maximizing impact of transnational cooperation pooling resources (material and intellectual) and implementing best practice - using synergies and reducing overlap by interacting with related (international) initiatives (especially JPIs HDHL and FACCE) - Promoting the outputs of SUSFOOD2 network and funded projects via targeted dissemination thus sharing common vision and creating awareness for the field of food sustainability.

AGROECOLOGY, the European Partnership ‘Accelerating Farming Systems Transition: Agroecology Living Labs and Research Infrastructures’, is an ambitious, large-scale European research and innovation endeavour between the EC and 26 Member States (MS), Associated Countries (AC) and Third Countries. AGROECOLOGY will support an agriculture sector that is fit to meet the targets and challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss, food security and sovereignty, and the environment, while ensuring a profitable and attractive activity for farmers. Major change is needed to make the agriculture sector more sustainable, resilient and responsive to societal and policy demands. Agroecology builds on natural, biological interactions while using state-of-the-art science, technology and innovation based on farmers’ knowledge. It represents a promising approach with the potential to respond to challenges faced by the European agriculture sector and to meet its needs. Real-life testing and experimentation environments, living labs are an appropriate instrument to accelerate the agroecology transition. Research infrastructures will also contribute to making scientific knowledge on agroecology available for this transition. Together these instruments will allow for ambitious experimentation at different scales, merging science and practice, to provide science-based evidence on the effects of novel approaches and accelerate the agroecology transition. AGROECOLOGY will pool the resources of the EC and the states involved to fund high-level research generating appropriate knowledge and technologies aligned with the core themes described in the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda, while also implementing a series of supporting activities to inform, consult, advise and involve different stakeholders to build capacities, raise awareness and manage and exchange the knowledge and data created.

Being one of the main actions of the EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030, the European Biodiversity Partnership (Biodiversa+) will coordinate research programmes between EU and its Member States and Associated Countries, mobilising environmental authorities as key partners for implementing biodiversity research and innovation, along with ministries of research, funding organisations, and environmental protection agencies (75 organisations from 37 countries). Biodiversa+ has five overarching objectives: (1) improve monitoring of biodiversity and ecosystem services across Europe (status and trends); (2) generate actionable knowledge to tackle the direct and indirect drivers of biodiversity loss; (3) expand and improve the evidence base, and accelerate the development and wide deployment of NbS to meet societal challenges across Europe; (4) make the business case for the conservation and restoration of biodiversity; and (5) ensure efficient science-based support for biodiversity policy making in Europe. Biodiversa+ will meet these objectives by (i) setting up a pan-European network of harmonized monitoring schemes, building on existing national/regional monitoring schemes, creating capacity for setting up new schemes, and feeding into the EC Knowledge Center for Biodiversity; (ii) coordinating research programmes between the EU and its Member States and associated countries, thereby ensuring the long-term pan-European research agenda is co-created and implemented; (iii) contributing science-based methodologies to account for and possibly value ecosystem services and the natural capital, and to assess the dependency and impact of businesses on biodiversity and (iv) better linking of R&I programmes to the policy arena, providing greater input to policy making and improving the assessment of policy efficiency. Doing so, Biodiversa+ will help ensure that, by 2030, nature in Europe is back on a path of recovery, and by 2050 people are living in harmony with Nature.