Susfood

This ERA-NET consists of a network of 25 partners from 16 European countries:
Belgium (Institute for Agricultural and Fisheries Research-Ev Ilvo), Denmark (Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation-Dasti, University of Copenhagen-LMC), Estonia (Ministry of Agriculture-EVPM), Finland (Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry-MMM, Agrifood Research-MTT), France (Actia, ANR, Inra), Germany (Federal Office for Agriculture and Food-BLE, Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection-BMELV, Jülich Research Centre), Italy (Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies-Mipaaf), Norway (Research Council of Norway-RNC), Poland (National Centre for Research and Development-NCBiR), Romania (Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding-Uefiscdi), Slovenia (Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports-MESCS), Spain (Basque Foundation for Agro-Food Safety-Elika, Info Murcia, National Institute of Agricultural Research, Technology and Food-Inia), Sweden (Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning-Formas), The Netherlands (Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation-EL&I), The United Kingdom (Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs-Defra, The Technology Strategy Board-TSB), Turkey (Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock-GDAR).

December 2011

36 months

Grant agreement n°291766

As an ERA-Net, SUSFOOD aims to set up a European strategic research agenda by increasing cooperation and synergy between the European partners and by defining common future perspectives in sustainable food production and consumption to maximize the contribution of research to the development of food systems aiming at more sustainability from production to consumption.

SUSFOOD promotes a multi-disciplinary approach from biology to food engineering and social sciences and tends towards the following socio-economic goals:
- develop sustainable food systems from production to consumption while reducing waste in food supply chain and limiting environmental damages;
- improve quality of life by improving food quality in a sustainable way and the resilience of the food supply chain;
- encourage consumers to act in a more sustainable way;
- improve competitiveness and economic growth in the European food industry with special attention to SMEs.

The scope of SUSFOOD includes the entire food supply chain with main focus on food chain sustainability beyond the farm gate. It will cover processing, packaging, transport, retailing, food services, storage and consumer activities.

An overview of the existing research (synergies, gaps and overlaps) will be achieved by means of an open web based archive, named the Meta Knowledge Base (MKB).
We encourage researchers from industries and research institutes to post their research projects in the database, which is freely accessible and can be found on the SUSFOOD website.

This tool will help choose the research topics funded within the two open calls of SUSFOOD. These calls support sustainability oriented food chain programmes and will be launched in 2013 and 2014.