What is the problem/issue being addressed?
The livestock sector is associated with a variety of challenges with regard to emissions (including climate change), biodiversity, resource use, rural livelihoods, animal health & welfare, and global food and nutrition security.
For the future, global meat consumption is projected to increase significantly, while animal production will increasingly be affected by climate change and competition for natural resources, particularly land and water, and it will have to face the need to reduce fossil energy dependency and environmental impact.
Why is it important for society?
SusAn aimed to fund research on innovative solutions for animal production systems to safeguard natural resources, to reduce environmental impacts, including greenhouse gases, to take related societal concerns into consideration, whilst providing Europe’s citizens with sufficient, healthy and safe food. SusAn thereby addressed several societal challenges and associated themes under Horizon 2020, for example sustainable agriculture, environment, resource efficiency and Europe in a challenging and changing world.
What are the overall objectives?
In order to help deliver a unified vision and solutions for a more sustainable and secure future for animal production in Europe, SusAn partners pooled national/regional resources to make better use of scarce public research funding and work together more effectively in identified key areas.
To tackle the challenge of sustainability, SusAn applied a systems approach that covered the three sustainability pillars - economy, environment and society - to livestock farming in a way that can be regarded as a new paradigm in research. This is expected to make a significant contribution to the development of a more sustainable animal production in Europe.
Conclusions of the action
The ERA-NET SusAn successfully managed to implement this EC funding instrument to support public-public partnerships. SusAn terminated after six years, on 28.02.2022 after a one-year prolongation. SusAn established significant collaboration with other ERA-NETs, namely the ERA-NETs FACCE ERA GAS, ICT AGRI 2 / FOOD and SusCrop, resulting in two additional, non-cofunded calls with broad system approaches. In parts, this additional collaboration was the first of its kind and is regarded by their partners as a good preparation for future European Partnerships.
Together with the ERA-NETs involved in the Joint Calls, SusAn mobilized approximately 35 million euros of public funding for research from the Member States. The calls, together with other joint activities, created a momentum, which will be sustained after the end of the ERA-NET.
From the discussions during the SusAn final conference in January 2022 it became clear that SusAn contributed to the development of more sustainable agri-food systems and that continued efforts are needed in the direction layed out by SusAn. During the duration of the ERA NET, the consortium partners have built mutual trust and common processes. This is a substantial step towards future collaboration.
