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.

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.

The aim of the “ERA-NET Cofund on Sustainable Crop production“ (SusCrop) is to strengthen the European Research Area (ERA) in the field of crop research, in particular in relation to crop production. The SusCrop partners, a consortium of European programme managers and programme owners, will provide a joint call for proposals in the R&D area of sustainable crop production. It will be co-funded by the partners of the consortium and the European Commission and will address the following research topics: • Enhancement of predictive breeding technologies and development of new genotypes leading to new phenotypes and crop varieties • Development and exploitation of novel integrated pest and crop management methods and practices • Improvement of resource-use efficiency of crops and cropping systems • Systemic research on agricultural crops as part of an ecosystem (“plant as a meta-organism”) The potential of further joint funding activities of the consortium without cofunding of the EC will be proved and implemented as appropriate. By a broad range of accompanying measures that go beyond these funding activities, it will further contribute to: • Harmonise data collection on sustainable cropping to deliver a database that can be mined to build models and indices of sustainability and resilience • Develop methods of assessing the sustainability and resilience of cropping systems at different levels (e.g. field, farm, landscape) using ICT-based knowledge technologies Additionally it will provide a strategic direction for a sustainable crop production for the future and will work in close collaboration with the Joint Programming Initiative on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change (FACCE-JPI).

The Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership (SBEP) aims to design, steer and support a just and inclusive transition to a regenerative, resilient and sustainable blue economy, boosting the transformation needed towards a climate-neutral, sustainable, productive and competitive EU by 2030. The SBEP will deliver solutions to strengthen EU and international science-policy interfaces in marine- and maritime-related domains of the EU Green Deal and Digital Europe strategies through aligning national, regional and EU R&I priorities bringing together science, industry, policy and society. It will also contribute to accelerate the post-pandemic recovery and resilience. In line with the EC new approach for a sustainable blue economy in the EU, the SBEP rolls-out impact pathways to: catalyse the transformation of ocean economy value chains; deliver ocean knowledge and impact-driven R&I solutions; cooperate to respond to international, EU and national regulations, recommendations and policy strategies; contribute to the social and digital transition by developing innovative governance frameworks that benefit coastal communities, including by reinforcing skills and enhance ocean observation capacity contributing to EOOS and GEOSS. Together with the EC, 59 partners from 25 countries (MS and AC) in the first phase that raised to 75 partners from 30 countries (MS, AC and TC) in the seoncd phase, will join an unprecedent effort to pool R&I investments, aligning programmes at pan-European scale. The ambition is to launch 6 co-funded calls and implement relevant additional activities such as thematic annual programming, alignemnt of monitoring programmes, sharing of research infrastructures and developing portfolios of projects, over a seven-year timeframe to support R&I joint programming on thematic priority areas of interventions stemming from a co-designed SRIA. The SBEP will also identify additional mechanisms for alignment and look for further economic support of R&I programs leveraging other funding and finance streams. In parallel, a long-term structuring ambition will support the creation of a community of practice, fostering co-creation, coordinating all relevant initiatives at sea-basins/Atlantic ocean level and further promoting the EU blue economy at global level.

This proposal seeks funding under the Horizon 2020 Work Programme to establish an ERA-NET for International Coordination of Research on infectious Animal Diseases (ICRAD). The scope for this ERA-NET has been developed under the SCAR Collaborative Working Group on Animal Health & Welfare Research (CWG AHW), which seeks to build further on 2 previous successful ERA-NETS (EMIDA, ANIHWA). 31 partners from 20 countries initially seek to support one co-funded call followed by other joint activities including the update of the EU Animal Health Strategic Research Agenda and the initiation of new international partnerships. Animal diseases cause severe social, economic and environmental damage and in some cases threaten human health as well. Disease threats to the livestock industry have increased in the last decades due to globalisation, altering production methods, climate changes and increased contacts between wildlife and livestock. Effective control tools or key knowledge leading to better control is still missing for many important livestock diseases, including for African Swine Fever and animal influenza which pose great challenges in Europe and globally. Partners in this ERA-NET will address these threats through joint European research within a framework which supports multi-disciplinary research in the fields of (i) fundamental understanding of host/(vector)/pathogen interactions and the epidemiology of disease; (ii) vaccinology and (iii) diagnostics. Research and innovation coordinated through ICRAD will (i) increase preparedness and ability to respond to emerging and endemic livestock threats; (ii) provide improved vaccines and diagnostic tools and strategies; (iii) contribute to the reduction of antibiotic and antiparasitic resistance; and (iv) contribute to animal welfare by better disease prevention. By reducing the burden of animal disease and its impact on international trade, ICRAD will enhance food security and sustainable livestock production.