On 3 July 2026, the FOODTURE consortium came together online for its third General Assembly. The day was filled with presentations and discussions connecting researchers, industry and policy partners from across Europe and Peru. After 18 months of intensive groundwork, the project is moving from building its foundations to delivering results.
Measuring what usually stays invisible
FOODTURE exists to answer a deceptively simple question: what is the real impact of the food we eat? Across the day, teams shared progress on the methods, datasets and tools that make that question answerable. This will create a shared framework for assessing the environmental footprint of food from farm to fork, alongside work on how foods and diets affect human health.
Much of this is the unglamorous engineering behind good science: harmonising methods, building robust datasets, and testing them so the results hold up. Some of it is already moving toward peer-reviewed publication. It rarely makes headlines, but it is exactly what separates a good idea from a measurable, usable solution.
Turning data into decisions
Data only matters if people can act on it. Several sessions focused on bridging that gap:
Partners advanced work on “food baskets” — representative sets of foods that make it possible to compare the impacts of real diets across different countries — with a dedicated partner workshop planned for September to sharpen the approach. Others looked ahead to stakeholder workshops in several European countries, designed to bring findings directly to the farmers, producers and decision-makers who can put them to use. Throughout, the emphasis was on results that are practical, comparable and transparent.
Growing interest, growing collaboration
A telling sign of momentum: interest in FOODTURE’s emerging data and tools is coming from outside the consortium, including organisations keen to draw on the project’s database for their own sustainability reporting.
What comes next
The coming months will bring the project’s first practical results. The consortium will reconvene at its next General Assembly in the next year to take stock and set the course for the project’s final phase.
For 18 months, FOODTURE has been doing the quiet work that real change is built on. Now the first results are almost ready to serve.
Want to follow the findings as they land? Connect with us on LinkedIn — there’s a lot coming to the table.
