GSS EU Science Funding Gateway

Proposals responding to this topic should address one of the two complementary areas:

A. Proposals should speed up the innovation process and develop and test new technologies and tools along the food systems – from farm to fork, on land and at sea. Proposals should deliver on the food waste reduction and prevention targets relevant to the farm to fork strategy, across the food systems. They should also explain how they will deliver co-benefits on the four Food 2030 priorities: nutrition for sustainable healthy diets, climate and environment, circularity and resource efficiency, and innovation and empowerment of communities. The required multi-actor approach must be implemented by conducting inter- and trans-disciplinary research and involving a wide diversity of food system actors, with special attention paid to consumers and civil society organisations.

B. Develop and validate new tools and methods to measure and estimate food losses at the primary production stage, including storage of products originating from agriculture, fisheries and aquaculture. These new tools and methods should be applied and food losses at primary production stage measured across a large enough sample of diverse farms/production systems and value chains for a wide range of the most important commodities produced in the EU, across several years and in all Member States. This should generate robust measurement/estimation of food losses at the primary production stage for different commodities, at the Member State and EU levels, and at an aggregated level. To minimise data collection bias, each Member State should create a pool of trained researchers who are able to use the method and directly measure the food losses at the primary production stage. In addition to measurement, the direct and indirect drivers and root causes of food losses at primary production stage should be thoroughly investigated. Particular attention should be paid to the identification of market driven food losses at the primary production stage, to assess the potential for a reduction strategy based on marked demand shifts.

Proposals should provide recommendations for policymakers and best practice guidelines / business strategies for researchers and relevant operators across the various diverse terrestrial and aquatic food value chains. Proposals should build on the work done by the Commission’s Joint Research Centre in support of the EU Platform on Food Losses and Food Waste and be aligned with the environmental footprint method developed by the Commission.