January 2025 – December 2028
17 partners
5 Use cases
8 European countries
1 South American country
FOODTURE is built on a simple idea: you can’t improve what you can’t measure. As Europe works to create healthier, more resilient food systems, FOODTURE provides the data, tools, and partnerships to make it happen.
This EU-funded research and innovation project is developing the next generation of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodologies to track the full impact of food – from farm to fork. With advanced tools for environmental and nutritional assessment, it supports evidence-based decisions for farmers, businesses, policymakers, and researchers.
Using precision agriculture, remote sensing, and spatial data, the project creates detailed Life Cycle Inventories (LCIs) and explores the trade-offs and synergies between environmental, economic, social, animal welfare, and health impacts.
But FOODTURE is more than data – it’s a collaboration. All insights and tools are open-access, enabling every actor in the food system to apply impact assessment in practice.
The result? A clear, science-based roadmap for a circular, transparent, and low-pollution food system – built for Europe’s future
FOODTURE aims to drive systemic change in the European food sector by advancing innovation and improving the accuracy of impact assessments. The project develops and validates enhanced Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodologies, moving beyond generic data to deliver more reliable results.
Through stakeholder engagement at every stage, FOODTURE identifies practical levers for reducing environmental pressures and strengthening the resilience of food value chains. The project emphasizes transparency and open access to ensure broad uptake and long-term relevance.
Special focus is placed on the validation of precision agriculture techniques and environmental management practices to reduce pollution and improve data quality. By refining data collection and assessment methods, FOODTURE sets out to establish a new benchmark for evidence-based decision-making in European food systems.
Advanced Life Cycle Assessment methodologies
Develop and validate improved LCA and LCIA methods that capture the full spectrum of food system impacts, including environmental, nutritional, social, and economic dimensions.
Create Europe-wide food system inventories
Build harmonized Life Cycle Inventories (LCIs) that map production, processing, packaging, and distribution activities across the EU.
Enable holistic system-level impact assessment
Quantify trade-offs and synergies between sustainability goals, including climate, biodiversity, animal welfare, public health, and economic performance.
Support decision-making with open tools and policy integration
Provide open-access tools, datasets, and policy briefs that translate complex research into practical recommendations for stakeholders and policymakers.
Foster multi-actor engagement across the food value chain
Engage farmers, companies, public bodies, scientists, and consumers through workshops, co-creation, and capacity-building activities to ensure the broad uptake of project results.
Communicate and disseminate for impact
Drive visibility, understanding, and adoption of project outcomes through coordinated communication strategies, scientific dissemination, stakeholder outreach, and public engagement.
80% of the European food market covered by 8.000 datasets
1 land use intensity map
1 Environmental impact calculator tool
5 policy briefs
30 workshops with relevant stakeholders
