FOODTURE’s long-term scientific contribution is in the methods it leaves behind. The project advances Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methods to land use, soil erosion, biodiversity, and pollution — grounded in solid data and current best practice in sustainable agriculture and LCA.
Because everything is open-access, the results travel further. Open publication supports higher citation rates, wider visibility, and the more follow-on research. Institutions, entrepreneurs, food producers and the wider public all gain from easier access to scientific work in a field where public interest is high and growing.
FOODTURE will shift how sustainability is measured and communicated across the food value chain. The tools and data the project produces will let producers design better products and back up their sustainability claims with credible evidence.
Consumer behaviour is already moving: nearly 80% of consumers now factor social and environmental values into what they buy. FOODTURE’s outputs help businesses meet the demand for traceable, locally rooted, and responsible products. At the same time, ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) performance is playing a bigger role in investment decisions, which makes better sustainability metrics directly commercially useful — for resilience, and for staying credible in a market that is paying more attention.
FOODTURE makes food’s environmental impact easier to see, which makes it easier to act on. When consumers have clear, accessible information about a product’s footprint, they can make better dietary choices and evidence from labelling studies suggests those choices can lower the environmental impact of food consumption by up to 10%. the environmental impacts of food products.
The benefits aren’t only environmental. Better-informed consumers tend to shift toward diets that also improve public health, which means better food choices work in two directions at once. FOODTURE uses the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) methodology to set benchmarks and track progress. Based on macro-level food consumption data and disaggregated impact indicators, the project projects meaningful reductions across six key environmental indicators within five years of completion.
