The European initiative FOODTURE aims to drive transformative change towards sustainable and innovative practices in the food sector. To achieve this, it will develop and validate improved Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodologies and foster active stakeholder participation to identify successful sustainability strategies and promote a resilient and circular food value chain. Prioritizing transparency and open access, FOODTURE develops research and innovation in precision agriculture techniques and environmental management practices that contribute to mitigating pollution and improving impact assessment holistically. FOODTURE offers 16 output groups, including life cycle inventories across the entire value chain of EU food systems, methodologies to improve life cycle impact assessment, system-level impact quantifications that consider trade-offs and synergies between environmental, social, economic, animal welfare, and human health dimensions, as well as policy reports, open access tools, and training sessions to help stakeholders integrate LCA into their daily operations. All activities are carried out through the continuous integration of stakeholders across the value chain at each stage of project implementation. The main objective of FOODTURE is to enable a significant transformation in the European food sector, with an emphasis on sustainability and innovation. FOODTURE aims to develop and validate improved LCA methodologies that move beyond the use of generic data, co-create effective strategies for sustainability and circularity with stakeholders, quantify impacts at different levels to support decision-making regarding trade-offs and synergies, promote the goal of zero pollution and the regionalized assessment of environmental impacts, and broadly explain, visualize, and communicate the results and tools, thus establishing a new standard for the integrated management of food systems.
