The Food and Nutrition Security Knowledge Hub bridges a number of societal challenges, encompassing the entire food system across land and sea and from farm to fork. In their Strategic Research Agendas, the three participating JPIs have each identified different aspects of the food system and are now combining their perspectives in a coordinated effort. This brings together different research domains and national and international research investments and aims to involve of consumers, primary producers, industry and other key actors. This stakeholder involvement through the three JPIs should ultimately facilitate knowledge flow from research towards practice.
The Knowledge Hub was launched in January 2019 in collaboration with the Joint Programming Initiatives on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change (FACCE-JPI) and on Healthy Diet for a Healthy Life (JPI HDHL). A joint call among participating countries resulted in the project SYSTEMIC that started in July 2020. The project connects researchers with other existing initiatives and relevant stakeholders of Food and Nutrition Security research. The approach consists of a modelling component and an intervention component consisting of several research activities. The project organised its mid-term meeting in Rome in September 2022 and a Final Seminar in Madrid in March 2024. The project finished on 1 July 2024.
The idea to address Food and Nutrition Security was inspired by a grand debate during the Milan international EXPO in 2015. The FACCE and HDHL JPIs subsequently published the joint paper Priority Joint Actions to contribute to the European Strategy on Food and Nutrition Security. In 2016, JPI Oceans joined the initiative to ensure the entire food system could be addressed. Two expert workshops were held in 2016 to develop a working paper that was presented to the Management Boards of each JPI.
Accelerate, further characterise and manage the impact of climate change on nutritional make-up of food, and to propose adaptive strategies and measures to ensure food and nutrition security.
Mediate dialogue and co-design with stakeholders to increase acceptance and uptake of the research outcomes among the following societal actors:
- Consumers: Awareness and acceptance of the consumer towards foods is key. Aspects to be considered are nutritional quality, food safety, production methods, sensory aspects, ethical and environmental issues.
- Industry: Working with industry will increase diversity in feed and food sources to provide greater nutritional qualities and contribute to resilient production systems to explore food products which are both ethically and economically viable.
- Regulatory authorities: Close cooperation can encourage the authorisation of new products.
The research is expected to contribute to the implementation of the European Commission’s FOOD 2030 initiative, but also to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, by connecting research communities along the entire food value chain to propose adapted, acceptable and sustainable solutions to achieving food and nutrition security. It promotes the building of lasting transdisciplinary coordination across a range of fields. It is expected that the research helps to provide solutions for providing sustainable, resilient food systems for nutritious food from land and sea to feed an ever-changing world.
Food and nutrition security is essential for human survival and a growing challenge with the increasing number of people in the world, especially combined with the growing threat of climate change to food security. To achieve sustainable and resilient food systems that provide nutritious food from land and sea, requires on the one hand to know the composition of a healthy nutritious diet and on the other hand how climate change will affect food production and nutritional quality. This information allows us to develop effective solutions for food provision along the whole food chain.