SUSFANS at the FOOD2030 congress

On September 5 and 6, the University of Hohenheim was the place to be, because of the congress of FOOD2030: Towards sustainable agri-food system. This congress aimed to raise awareness and openly discuss the European policy processes of FOOD2030 at the national level, which is also a relevant topic for the SUSFANS project, and thus some members of the SUSFANS team were also present: John Ingram, Monika Zurek, Anneleen Kuijsten and Elly Mertens. John Ingram was invited as a keynote speaker in the session ‘the values of a food system approach’, and he clearly explained some important definitions when thinking about food systems. In the afternoon, his talk was complemented by a presentation of Monika Zurek in which she explained the performance metrics of our SUSFANS project.  In short, this preference metrics aims to aggregate a wide range of variables into a powerful set of metrics to communicate findings of the assessment, and this can be used as a tool for monitoring and for policy decision making. This performance metrics include a set of metrics for each of the four policy goals for the EU system, i.e. a balanced diet for EU citizens, reduced environmental impacts, competitive agri-food businesses and equitable outcomes of the food system. The second day of the congress, Elly Mertens gave a presentation on the environmental impact of the diet using data from four European countries, i.e. Denmark, Czech Republic, Italy and France, as part of work package 7 of the SUSFANS project. In particular, the leading question throughout the presentation was “What explains the variability in environmental impact of the diet?”.  Factors considered to explain the variability were total energy intake, country, demographics and diet composition.