The vision of FutureFoodS is to collectively achieve environmentally-friendly, socially secure, fair and economically viable healthy and safe Food Systems (FS) for Europe. FutureFoodS gather 87 partners from 22 EU Member States, 6 Associated Countries and 1 third country. FutureFoodS includes public and private actors, policy makers, foundations, locally, sub-nationally, nationally, EU-widely. All these FutureFoodS partners are fully aligned on the vision for the Partnership and the methodology for its implementation in line with SDG17 and EU Green Deal components. This vision has been broken down into general (GO), specific (SO) and operational (OO) objectives applying across the 4 R&I areas and 4 transversal activities identified by the FutureFoods consortium in its stable draft Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) which constitutes the strategic backbone of the project. The four GO cover: GO1 - Functioning of FS; GO2 - System approaches; GO3 - Inclusive government; GO4 - Co-creation cases. These GO have then been translated into SO prioritised in line with the timescale and resources of the Partnership: SO1 - Change the way we eat; SO2- Change the way we process and supply food, SO3 - Change the way we connect with FSs and SO4 - Change the way we govern FS. In addition, 6 interconnected OO have been set: OO1- Pooling R&I resources and programming; OO2 - Operational FS Observatory; OO3 - Active FS knowledge Hub of FS Labs; OO4 - Functioning knowledge sharing and scaling mechanisms; OO5- Revisiting the SRIA; OO6 - Promoting, supporting, widening & gathering FS various communities. The objectives implemented in the 8 WPs of FutureFoodS will exert impact directly or indirectly in most of the destinations of Horizon Europe’s Cluster 6 2023-2024 work programme and particularly for the topic destination ‘Fair, healthy and environment-friendly FS from primary production to consumption’ echoing to the main EU and World FS policies & strategies.

European soils face pressing conditions for their health. An alarming 60-70% of EU soils are considered unhealthy, attributed to factors such as pollution, urbanization, and intensive agriculture, further exacerbated by climate change. This degradation results in economic, societal, and environmental repercussions, including decreased land productivity, migration, land abandonment, and biodiversity loss. Addressing this challenge necessitates holistic measures, especially since soil restoration can take centuries. The project initiative, aligning with various EU policies, emphasizes the importance of comprehensive soil restoration efforts. It plans to establish six Soil Health Living Labs (SHELLs) across diverse EU climatic zones, including Sweden, Spain, Spain-France, Italy, Greece, and Bulgaria. These labs are envisioned as innovation hubs, tailored to address the EU's specific soil health objectives, notably objectives 4, 6, and 8. Through collaborative efforts within these SHELLs, the goal is to develop, test, and validate potential solutions, ensuring scalability beyond their immediate regions. iCOSHELLs places a strong emphasis on inclusive stakeholder engagement, from researchers to landowners. Its systematic approach includes building stakeholder capacities, bridging gaps between science and practical applications, deepening understanding of soil indicators, replicating effective soil recovery methods, and championing supportive soil health policies. Additionally, iCOSHELLs seeks to redefine the concept of Living Labs (LLs). Challenging the traditional model, which often revolves around isolated research entities, iCOSHELLs envisions LLs rooted in co-creation, broad engagement, and real-world application. This transformative vision aims to evolve existing SHELLs into standardized, widely recognized labs, setting a foundational blueprint for future LLs. Moreover, as a comprehensive soil data repository, iCOSHELLs promotes collaboration, ensuring replicable.

SHEALTHY proposal aims to assess and develop an optimal combination of non-thermal sanitization, preservation and stabilization methods to improve the safety (inactivation of pathogens and spoilage microorganisms), while preserving the nutritional quality (up to 30%) and prolonging the shelf-life (up to 50%) of minimally processed F&V products. By combining and modulating non-thermal technologies with minimally processing operation, we will respond to consumers’ demand for fresh, healthy, convenient, sustainable and locally produced and additive-free food. The combined and optimised mild technologies will be demonstrated and validated in 2 business cases: Minimally processed fruits and vegetables and Fruit and vegetable-based juices & smoothies. Sanitization during washing will be optimized by applying in combination ultrasound (US), electrolysed water, plasma activated water, High Intensity Pulsed Light and Blue Light. Bioactive coating, active and intelligent packaging will be applied for quality preservation and shelf life extension of minimally processed F&V. F&V-based juices & smoothies will be stabilized by US and high pressure processing. For F&V by-product valorisation, US, pulsed electric field and membrane filtration will be used to extract bioactive compounds. Sustainable and flexible processing methods will be transferred and adapted to the need of local F&V micro and SMEs, interconnecting primary producers through novel cooperative business models and new logistics systems, to enhance the traceability and authenticity of raw materials along the F&V value chain. Commercial feasibility will be assessed, including consumer acceptance and regulatory, safety and environmental aspects. SHEALTHY will combine the technology trends and consumer needs to afford the business models, technology transfer and market orientation that will facilitate the transition towards a new collaborative agrifood ecosystem for traditional, local and rural SMEs around EU.

The agricultural sector is known for its demanding and hazardous working environments, leading to high rates of accidents and health issues among workers. Furthermore, drudgery due to physical work and repetitive tasks diminishes the attractiveness of the sector for youth. Emerging challenges such as digitalisation, technological intensification, structural change, environmental targets, and new risks due to climate change, coupled with global economic implications demand more and more from farmers and farm workers, exacerbate the need for timely information, and have new implications for occupational safety and health (OSH). AGRO-WELL follows a highly interdisciplinary approach to enhance knowledge for technological transitions towards an environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable agricultural sector. It brings together leading scientists from a multitude of OSH-related disciplines, various regions across Europe, key technology providers and farmer representatives. The project will assess farmer needs and explore ways to increase awareness with respect to smart farming. AGRO-WELL builds on five technologies to leverage the potential of robotics, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence to enhance working conditions and farm safety, enable faster and better-informed farm management decisions, and reduce the environmental impact of four different farming systems. Potential effects of the technologies will be multidimensionally assessed. To support market uptake, AGRO-WELL will design and explore the viability of business models based on novel technologies that are predominantly focused on improving OSH. To support other promising technologies, AGRO-WELL will incorporate an open technology competition enabled by cascade funding. All project results will be synthesized in effective dissemination strategies and meaningful policy recommendations to foster promising technological solutions and sustainable business models.