The SUSFOOD2 ERA-Net Cofund started in January 2017 with 26 partners from 15 EU member states or 3rd countries which joined the SUSFOOD2 consortium and is coordinated by Nikola Hassan and Frank Hensgen from PTJ Juelich, Germany.

The SUSFOOD ERA-Net was built on and accelerated the work of the SCAR (Standing Committee on Agricultural Research) Collaborative Working Group that was launched in Denmark in 2010.​

In 2011, a first SUSFOOD ERA-NET was developed under the EU 7th Framework Program (FP7) and consisted of a durable focused network of national research funders in Member and Associated States of the EU. In SUSFOOD, 25 partners from 16 Countries were active, coordinated by INRA, France. ​

The purpose of the first SUSFOOD was to share information, coordinate activities and work towards a common research agenda and mutual research funding activities in the field of sustainable food production and consumption. During this ERA-Net, a Strategic Research Agenda was developed to identify eight priority research areas. These were used to determine the topics of the two Joint calls that were initiated between 2011 - 2014.​

For information sharing and mapping van research, an online database called the Meta Knowledge Base or MKB, was developed. The results thereof were summarized in the SUSFOOD Country report (see publications). ​

After it's ending in 2014, the SUSFOOD partners continued the network. ​

In January 2017, the network continued officially as an H2020 ERA-NET COFUND under the name SUSFOOD2. SUSFOOD2 consists of 26 partners from 15 EU Member states or 3rd countries, coordinated by Juelich, Germany. This ERA-NET COFUND will run for 5 years and its first action was the launch of a Joint cofunded call in its first month.