The road to co-create the SFS Partnership

Funders meet in Brussels for the future Sustainable Food Systems (SFS) Partnership
FOODPathS

On February 8th, the second FOODPathS Funders Forum brought together around 100 passionate individuals, half participating in person and the other half online, to shape and co-create the funding strategies of the future Sustainable Food Systems Partnership. If you couldn’t participate in the Forum, don’t worry! You can find the presentations and the recording of the plenairy sessions at the FOODPathS website.

Morning session
In the morning, the FOODPathS team presented some of the outcomes of the first Funders forum, such as the importance of co-creation and stakeholder involvement, combination of basic and applied science, the need to consider various elements for impact (e.g. also social, cultural, educational etc.) and the need to support the young generations, and went deeper into what the project is doing regarding the funding of the future Partnership. There were presentations about the future Sustainable Food Systems (SFS) Partnership and examples of food systems funding (of which SYSTEMIC was included) followed by a discussion with project partners. On behalf of JPI HDHL, our Deputy coodinator Jasmina van Driel shared the experiences on a food systems approach, points of attention and an innovative funding mechanism that were gained in the executed interviews with members from our Management Board. 

Afternoon session


The interactive afternoon session, exclusively for live participants, was a discussion on a food system conceptual model. This model aims to unpack the food system approach by:
1) exploring the impacts of change across the full system
2) capturing potential trade-offs between domains, and
3) recognising the complexities and dynamism of the food system.

Following the introductions of the model, the participants were challenged to consider the three levels of implementation – call text, proposal evaluation and impact level – that formed the basis of the interactive session. The participants were split into 3 groups and encouraged to think outside their comfort zones to come up with ideas for funding strategies and mechanisms that could enable real food systems-oriented, transdisciplinary research.

The three groups generated a wealth of innovative and thought-provoking ideas, which will be shared very soon in the upcoming workshop report.

More information about the FOODPathS CSA on the FOODPathS website.
Link to the recording can be found here.