This 2-days annual event covered whole food system with various sessions linking farmers, agrifood, healthier life, protein diversification, consumer behaviour, retailers, resiliency and systemic transition. It was also the opportunity to look back at what partners achieved during the past years and to voice our expectations and hopes for the future. During the months to come, we can expect some positive developments, which are presented below.
- Changes in the calls’ structure and schedule
In the future, calls will be focusing on EIT Food core missions: 1) healthier lives through food, 2) a net zero food system and 3) reducing risk for a fair and resilient food system. Cross missions are a) regenerative agriculture, 2) protein diversification and 3) labelling, packaging and transparency.
Calls will be multi-annual, for example 2023-2025. They should be open around the year, with several submission windows’ deadlines. This change is warmly welcome, as it will allow clarity and long-term planning, which have been lacking in EIT Food operations in the past years.
They will also be more opportunities for co-funding to connect our activities with EIT Food infrastructure, resources and network.
Watch here the recording of the session about mission-based funding & collaboration opportunities, and here the recording about building consortium.
- Launch of myeitfood.eu
A new platform is currently being developed “myeitfood.eu”, which should replace all the platforms nowadays in use (Plaza, FoodHive, FoodHype, EIT Food Website, etc). A soft launch has taken place in Q2 2023, and we can expect this new platform to fully replace Plaza by the end of 2023. This one-stop-shop change should ease access to information and opportunities.
Watch here the recording of myeitfood.eu session
- More opportunities to engage
In addition to co-funding projects, EIT Food will increase its offering to partners in terms of convening and advocating, via the establishment and animation of Think Thanks TANK, working groups and the increased willingness to advocate for changes of the food systems. Mari Sandell is already participating in the Alternative Protein Think Thank for the University of Helsinki (more info here).
- Andy Zynga no longer EIT Food CEO
EIT Food current CEO will step down in the months to come, the management structure is in place and EIT Food strategy has been recently updated, so no dramatic changes are expected due to this change of leadership.
