AUTHOR: Jean-François Hulot and Nora Hiller (IEEP)
Research and Innovation (R&I) are essential for farming systems adapting to operate in the face of planetary challenges of global warming, biodiversity loss and natural resources exhaustion. All the dimensions of sustainability will be seriously challenged and only R&I have the capacity to bring forward innovative solutions to move ahead.
To help shape the future of public agricultural research and innovation in the EU, IEEP has led the European Sustainable Agriculture Dialogue (ESAD), a platform bringing together key stakeholders from diverse sectors and interest groups related to EU agriculture and food. In 2023 and 2024, in view of the next European research programme FP10, ESAD’s work focused on the research needs to advance a sustainable farm and food system sustainable system in the EU and globally.
Over the next months, IEEP will publish science-based research briefings produced by experts in the field over the last two years in collaboration with the ESAD platform. These briefings touch upon the important topics of transformative innovation, soil microbiome, crop diversification, nitrogen, land efficiency, food waste, and EU-Africa R&I collaboration.
This synthesis report gathers the outcomes and recommendations from these research briefings prepared within the ESAD platform. It also considers the ongoing discussions on the future of FP10 to deliver recommendations and conclusive remarks that will be key for making every euro invested in the European R&I a lever for accelerating the transition of agriculture and food systems. The synthesis paper provides a first glance at the ESAD research briefs, including:
- Addressing knowledge gaps in agricultural research,
- Rebalancing competitiveness and sustainability in the farming sector,
- Tackling adaptation to global warming and restoration of biodiversity,
- Investing in resilient food systems and demand for sustainable products,
- Committing to open governance in agricultural and food R&I.
Cover photo by Viktor Hesse on Unsplash
