On 4th and 5th December, Data4Food2030 participated at the FOOD2030 Conference, organised by the European Commission, in its premises, in Brussels, Belgium. Let’s have an overview of our fruitful participation in this insightful conference!
The need to transform our food systems towards sustainability and resilience has never been more prominent, as the European Commission underlines. Το achieve our EU Green Deal goals this transformation is of high urgency. While our food systems are highly complex, characterised by uncertainty, multiple drivers, impacts and interconnected sectors, the EU highlights that acting simultaneously on many fronts is the only key to success. This is why we need a systems approach to understand the challenges and to target transformational change through a coherent set of policies, initiatives, and investments. To this end, the role of Research and Innovation (R&I) policy has been recognised as key to unravelling the complexities and catalysing solutions. Organised by the European Commission, FOOD2030 conference’s main aim was to showcase achievements of EU food systems related projects, explore future research and innovation orientations and levers of change, while bringing together a wide range of actors and policy makers.
Members from our coordinating organisation Wageningen Research, as well as members from our partners EV ILVO, INRAE and Foodscale Hub represented Data4Food2030 in FOOD2030, which also served as a meeting point for the Data4Food2030 team to connect again in person, after our 2nd General Assembly in Thessaloniki, in early October. Among other EU funded projects, Data4Food2030 had its own stand in the Food village, the FOOD2030 Conference’s exhibition area, where visitors could engage with various topics around Green & Resilient Food Systems. Our stand attracted multiple food systems stakeholders from all over Europe and other EU projects representatives, giving us the opportunity to get to know interesting EU projects with ambitious missions, explore future collaborations and exchange lessons learned and perspectives. We also had the chance to engage stakeholders interested in our research, by providing a QR code with our questionnaire, provided by our partner INRAE, via which the participants contributed to the development of the Data Economy for Food Systems definition, our project’s conceptual framework and vocabulary. Of course, our 3-minute introductory video accompanied our stand, offering the participants the opportunity to get an insight of our vision and main concepts at a glance!
The conference gave us the opportunity to not only connect with various food system stakeholders, but also, to discuss about potential collaboration opportunities with organisations and universities from Europe and beyond. Among them, the University of Westminster, the Trakia University, the EU projects CITIES2030 and FOODSAFETY4EU, with which we share numerous common goals, and many other companies and institutions. We are looking forward to collaborating towards Green & Resilient Food Systems!
It was an honour to participate in this conference by the European Commission – Thank you all for organising and supporting this exceptional organisation
