New EU Research Program Offers "Horizons" for Food Research Clusters

The first two challenges of " HORIZONS 2020", will encompass the whole food-value-chain which is expected to contribute to health, healthy food, sustainable food productions as well as to waste and environmental issues.

Oct 27 2011 --- Pierre Mathy from the EU Commission, Head of Unit in the Directorate General for Research and Innovation, pointed to the six societal challenges which will be given an own pillar in the future EU Research Programme, due to come out in a draft versionon December 2011:

"Health, Demographic Change and Wellbeing"
"Food Security and the Bio - Based Economy"
"Secure, clean and efficient Energy"
"Smart, green and integrated Transport"
"Climate action & Ressource Efficiency, incl. Raw Materials"
"Inclusive, innovative and secure Societies"

The first two challenges of the so-called "Challenges Pillar" in the future EU- Framework Research Programme, revamped as " HORIZONS 2020", will encompass the whole food-value-chain which is expected to contribute to health, healthy food, sustainable food productions as well as to waste and environmental issues. " The hollistic, interdisciplinary approaches will be key for future research funding by the EU" said Pierre Mathy, during the meeting of 70 food researches, economists, sports scientists and food cluster managers at the OPEN DAYS in Brussels. Two concrete examples for these hollistic approaches were given during the event: A presesentation of a closed EU research project, the DIOGENES Study, exploring on diets, genes and obesity with mass intervention studies, showed the need for  integrated concepts in order to contribute sustaniably to health. A speech over the running interdisciplnary EU project FOODSECURE demonstrated the global dimension of food and nutrition security dealing with scarcity of resources and competitive parameters in agriculture and environment.  

"Afresh" is a member of the EU Food Cluster Initiative , a network which consists of 14 food- and activity related EU Projects, funded by the Framework Research Programme under the strand of the capacity- building programmes "Regions of Knowledge" and "Research Potential". A good part of the network stems from Eastern European countries. As an recently published  impact study on the added value of the Food Cluster Initiative found out, the clusters could advance extraordinary in strategy building and integrating into the Eruopean Research Area. By a common scheme of self assessment, the so-called SOWT analyses, the food-research clusters were given a tool to improve and elaborate on their future orientations. 

www.afresh-project.eu