Co-funded Call final seminar hybrid meeting in Istanbul, Turkey

Our food system is facing various challenges. SUSFOOD2 launches calls and supports research in the field of sustainable food production and consumption to meet these challenges. Within the co-funded call launched in 2017, SUSFOOD2 has funded 12 transnational research projects with a total budget of 11.5 Mio EUR, including top-up funding from the European Commission.

The 12 co-funded projects proudly present many steps forward to address the following socio-economic and environmental goals:

• To develop sustainable food systems from production to consumption, to increase food production sustainably while reducing waste in food supply chain and limiting environmental impacts;

• To improve the quality of life by improving food quality in a sustainable way and to ensure the resilience of the food supply chain;

• To encourage sustainable consumer behaviours and food choices;

• To improve competitiveness and economic growth in the European food industry with special attention to SMEs.

SUSFOOD2 conducted a final seminar for these projects on 26 October 2021 in Istanbul as a hybrid meeting to reveal the findings of the projects three-year studies, which had the mission to work towards more sustainable, resilient and secure food systems, by reinforcing the cooperation in research, development and innovation between EU Member and associated States.

There were 41 participants in the seminar, including members of SUSFOOD2 Governing Board and External Advisory Board, project representatives and invited guests. Although the number of registered people was higher than the actual attendance, the majority of people joined online, whereas 7 of the participants joined the seminar physically in Istanbul.

The final seminar started with welcoming words and presentations of the SUSFOOD2 coordination (Nikola Hassan) and TAGEM, the host of the seminar represented by Ahmet Budaklıer. The main part of the seminar was composed of two pitches and two open discussion sessions.

In the pitch sessions, each project representative gave an 8 min presentation about their project. The presenters brought a typical object related to their project and started their talk with these objects. Since the 12 project presentations needed to be short, we invited the participants to already get an overview of the work achieved by watching the videos that each project has prepared which are still available at https://susfood-db-era.net/main/projects-presentation.

In the open discussion sessions, participants asked questions and made comments. Moreover, project partners exchanged on expectations, lessons learned and experiences they made. For many, COVID-19 brought challenges but also new forms for collaboration and dissemination of results. All project representatives were asked to give some good practice examples of the employed dissemination actions (e.g. videos dedicated to specific stakeholder groups, press notes, social and mass media, national newspapers etc).

More information about this final seminar can be found in the report.