The importance of reconsidering European food systems in a global context has been highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic; it has made evident that the global food supply chain is vulnerable to disruptions. Climate change and the resulting transformation pressures are an additional key challenge for agriculture. Our current food system also suffers from the overuse of chemicals in food production, monoculture cropping systems, adverse environmental impacts of intensive animal farming on land and at sea, resulting in soil degradation and negative impact on water and biodiversity. The Green Deal, notably the Farm to Fork and Biodiversity strategies, climate action, zero pollution ambition and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) are policy responses to tackle these challenges. There is an urgent need for a substantial shift in the food system to make agriculture more sustainable in economic, environmental and social terms.
Addressing this shift requires a better understanding of the barriers preventing food actors from adopting more sustainable practices and decision-making. Furthermore, we need a whole agri-food system approach, that allows us to consider the way food production, manufacturing, processing, retail, transport and consumption all influence each other. Regarding food production, the project aims to improve the sustainability of agriculture by promoting those practices in food production systems that are more environmentally friendly, economically viable and socio-culturally appropriate, and helping to remove the barriers to their adoption.
The project VISIONARY wants to make a difference in food system transitions by identifying why it is so difficult to change food systems. We investigate what factors underlie the path dependencies and ‘lock-ins’ in current unsustainable food systems, and show how these can be overcome. The project will learn from existing initiatives -in different countries and value chains- that are still niche and small-scale, and it will investigate the barriers to scaling up and out. For selected and promising food system transitions, VISIONARY will tackle both policy and business shifts that are necessary to make a change.
