Co-Is: Dr Monika Zurek, John Ingram, Dr Joost Vervoort
EU–funded project SUSFANS provided an integrated perspective on the EU’s food system for science and policy, building a conceptual framework, evidence base and analytical tools for underpinning EU-wide food policies. The ECI Food Group led on FNS conceptualisation and metrics, and stakeholder engagement.
The SUSFANS project team worked with a group of international researchers from around 10 European countries and a group of 30 stakeholders from industry, academia, policy and non-profit organisations. Four stakeholder meetings were held in the Czech Republic, Denmark, France and Italy, resulting case studies for each country.
Main messages
The EU food system is not "future-proof" enough in terms of sustainability performance. Current nutritional patterns are in imbalance, their environmental impact too large, economic viability and social justice are under pressure.
Despite substantial regional and cultural variation in diets, challenges for EU consumption patterns are similar:
- There is a need to shift to a reduction of energy intake
- There should be more intake of fruits and vegetable, legumes and nuts
- There should be less intake of Greenhous Gas emission-intensive consumption (meat, especially red meat)
- Less added sugar
- Intake of key micronutrient in replacement should be promoted.
SUSFANS has developed a novel approach to quantify diet change, as well as policy and production system innovations:
- Include EU-specific intake data in the framework, benchmarking national data against a reference sustainable, healthy diet for EU
- Model the entire system, including post-harvest food handling and retail
- Explore instruments and transformative pathways including economic sustainability and equity.
The 2030 Agenda on the Sustainable Development Goals offers opportunities for bending EU food system from quantity-driven to quality-driven:
- Growth, demography, and trade drivers suggest window of opportunity for aligning EU agriculture with environmental boundaries while remaining globally competitive as sustainable producer
- Various drivers of sustainable consumption among EU consumers are in line with health benefits, higher value added
- Involve consumer drivers in employing new metrics (e.g. emission per diet quality index instead of per ton) in decision-making on innovation strategy for industry
- Economic sustainability requires re-think of the position of farmers and producers.
Conclusion
It is possible for the EU to move towards sustainable diets and a sustainable food supply system in a matter of decades, but only with a proper transformation of production, consumption and trade.
- More information on the SUSFANS website
External team
