RDI projects

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Project Information

Name	Ethical Food Entrepreneurships
Start	1.1.2022
End	31.12.2023
Website	https://ethical-food.eu/
Status	Ended
Contact	Anna-Maria Saarela
Description	The food industry is a complex, global collective of diverse businesses that supply our food in the context of great environmental challenge. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the frailties of the food sector & its supply chain. It also has upended local, national & global food systems & put the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) further out of reach. The world’s growing food demand & the need for ethical and sustainable practices have become a challenge that the EU & the UN are encouraging us all to tackle. The European Green Deal & the SDGs are setting the framework for this challenge. The food & drink industry is the EU's biggest manufacturing sector in terms of jobs & value-added. The industry is dominated by SMEs (9/10 food & drink companies in Europe are SMEs) with 289,000 companies & 4.2 million employees. However, self-employment in the EU has not risen in decades, remaining at ~15% of the EU labour force. Potential entrepreneurs & SMEs have been slow to respond - they report they do not have the professional capacity or skills base to innovate/orchestrate change in the entrepreneurship, development, production & marketing of ethical food. Covid-19 has caused food consumers to reflect on their previous choices/patterns & instigated them to realign their needs/wants with ethical and health factors. Healthfulness has now become the biggest motivator for consumers compared with research carried out a decade ago. Ethical food production & sustainable sourcing are other high-ranking factors. COVID-19 has created the opportunity to repurpose food entrepreneurship training to specialise in healthy foods and resilient, sustainable production. Current food entrepreneurship training in our partner countries is generic and has failed to keep pace with post-pandemic influences. The time is right for EFE. Ethical food production includes consideration of people (the consumer & employees), the environment (centred on environmental sustainability) & animals (mainly concerned with animal rights & welfare).
Partners	EFE brings together six partners committed to the food sector and tackling skills deficits in response to societal challenge and opportunities. Together, we comprise a multi-disciplinary team spanning HEI (SUAS, ABU, IPB), food SME enablers/VET (BIA & MMS) and technical realisation EUEI. EFE was instigated by SUAS and BIA as a much-needed project to collaborate on, Supporting SME’s & Innovation and Sustainability & Feeding the Planet. EFE gave these core partners the opportunity to bring in diverse partners from their networks, as follows. SUAS has significant experience in leading multi-disciplined and multi-partner transnational projects as an overall co-coordinator or work lead partner. Finland is a pioneer and competitive pacemaker of a responsible food chain and Finnish food policy is seen as a model to the world. SUAS leadership role is supported by their knowledge of Open Innovative Space pedagogical approach, coordination expertise, innovative knowledge transfer models and activities, consumer-oriented product development practices from Future Food RDI hub. BIA Innovator Campus, compliments EFE through its work to build and innovate the food sector in the West of Ireland. While the food sector in Ireland is still the backbone of many communities, jobs at Enterprise Ireland-backed food companies fell 1.5 per cent in 2020. EFE will help BIA to increase ethical food teaching and entrepreneurship, deliver real innovation and sustainability supports and deliver value added learning to students and start-up enterprises. IPB-Braganca is a HEI that had previously worked with SUAS on the Tradeit project. In addition to impressive HE teaching capacity, a co-located Research Institute CIMO is located on campus which has strong industry involvement. These SMEs are keen to participate in the EFE activities suggested in the present proposal. Antalya Bilim University (ABU) also has academic strength and industry engagement. An existing contact of SUAS, Turkey traditionally produces more food than its domestic consumption. The Turkish food sector employs more than 100,000 staff in more than 28,000 enterprises. Turkey is a country where agricultural output shows significant increases every year. However, the ethics of food and agriculture is a new subject in Turkey, hence transfer of innovation will be a key learning for ABU as part of EFE. MOMENTUM specializes in innovative approaches to learning and enterprise development. They have years of experience in EU innovation and transfer of innovation and bring a strong track record in curriculum development. EUEI (DK)strengthens our pedagogical approach, bringing their expertise in the creation of immersive online educational environments. EUEI are uniquely experienced in ensuring the technology serves the pedagogic strategy and content, and not vice versa. Denmark’s position as one of the world leaders on food sustainability was reinforced when it came second in the ‘sustainable agriculture’ and third in the ‘tackling nutritional challenges’ parts of the 2018 Food Sustainability Index. All partners bring a strong track record in EU project work, some are more experienced than others in Erasmus+ projects. This will strengthen the work ethos & lead to increased confidence and ease of communication within the partnership, helping us to move quickly to the operational phase of the project. On the other hand, despite their long history of European collaboration, many partners are “new” to each other, having not worked with each other previously. This will bring freshness and optimise knowledge sharing and peer-to-peer learning. Above all, we hope that our shared level of commitment to EU processes and values will be valuable in helping us reflect EU culture and priorities in the materials we produce. This includes a focus on Ethical Food Entrepreneurship & its triple bottom line, as key transversal elements in our training resources.
Funded by	Erasmus+ 2021-2027