More than 100 attendees in the first Funders’ Forum

On November 29^th, more than 100 attendees representing ministries, funding agencies and various members of the research community had the opportunity to listen to the latest news on the development of the Sustainable Food Systems Partnership and the role of FOODPathS in this process. During this first public event organized by the project, important points such as the different roles, timelines and what can be expected were covered.

• Daniela Lueth (EC) provided a clear presentation on how the Partnership is embedded in the policy context and what is expected from Commission´s side. She also gave a timeline with most important milestones and some information about the stated commitments so far and the foreseen composition of partners in the future consortium.
• Hugo De-Vries (INRAE), project coordinator of FOODPathS, explained how the project’s activities will create the prototype of the future Partnership. He outlined that the role of funders is crucial to get and keep the Partnership in motion via joint orchestrated activities internally and externally with other Partnerships. He also stressed the importance of identifying the trade-offs of each of the measures to be proposed and how to better address them.
• Nikola Hassan (Jülich) fine-tuned how the project is building a Food System’s co-funding network to connect stakeholders and align funding strategies that represent the struggles and ideas from all the sectors involved. This “funders’ network” is visually displayed as a map on our website, where it provides an overview of the funding landscape represented by funders of various sectors, backgrounds, and expertise.

The 3 presentations were followed by an engagement session, where the attendees were  assigned to smaller breakout rooms of 8-10 people. The active participation of the attendees led to the generation of innovative ideas to inspire future funding mechanisms in the SFS partnership and food systems-oriented research topics while collecting experiences and good practices at various levels.

One of the important aspects addressed was the actual transformation of the food system and ability of the future Partnership to reach ambitious goals until 2030.The aim is to mobilise all relevant actors to work across disciplines and integrate system approach in the way future Research and Innovation is implemented.

The forum provided an excellent context for interaction where attendees had the chance to get their questions answered and provide their points of view. If you didn’t have the chance to participate this time, below you will find the link to the recording of the event, the presentations and the Q&A document.

If this sounds interesting, we would like to invite you to a second Funder’s forum, which will take place physically in second half of February 2023!