The vision of FOSTER is to build a foundation from which a new Knowledge and Innovation System (KIS) for Europe’s food system can emerge. The current structure is insufficient to address the emerging challenges of nourishing people in a healthy and sustainable way. Key objective is to gain insights into how it can be built to be more inclusive and better governed. 

FOSTER shall help to transform Europe’s food system outcomes and will achieve this by: 

• building a FOSTER Platform including food system-state of the art knowledge, foresight by semi-automated Horizon scanning, trend and threats-analysis and new multi-dimensional scenarios of EU food systems to 2040; 
• implementing the FOSTER Academy – including four Summer Schools – for integrating food system-related disciplines and citizen science to enhance food system understanding across the ERA; 
• initiating and assessing a co-creation and co-learning process within six national resp. regional Citizen Driven Initiatives (CDIs), in which new knowledge, strategies and Action Research Agendas are gained; 
• scaling out and deep CDIs solutions and approaches to other territorial contexts; 
• studying different R&I mechanisms of policy support for mission-oriented R&I policy for food systems transformation, and analysing and ground-proofing them in each CDI; 
• strengthening science-policy interfaces by co-learning processes with external experts and developing recommendations for food systems R&I policies tailored to different geographies and sectors; 
• identifying the trigger points to help ‘unlock’ system lock-ins and support further dynamics towards system transformation; 
• and applying reflective monitoring on all FOSTER’s co-learning activities to develop insights into how the KIS can be broadened from an agricultural-KIS to a food system-KIS.
  

To inspire adoption of FOSTER learnings, over 20 workshops and a final conference will be conducted; scientific position papers and policy briefs will be widely communicated. 

The online workshop on October 18–19, 2021, was the first in a series of interactive encounters involving foresight experts and practitioners from both EU services and the Member States. It focussed on exploring future dimensions and elements of contextual developments that may have important repercussions for EU R&I policies in general, and the 2nd Strategic Plan of Horizon Europe in particular. An overarching goal of the workshop, as well as the series of interactive meetings, was to provide initial impetus for a broad and in-depth discussion on the big picture and framework conditions for EU R&I policymaking.

The conference took place from 5-7 June 2024, and aimed to explore what conceptions of “better worlds” are being pursued by STI policies.

PRO-Ethics’ overall objective is to create a comprehensive, co-developed, tested and widely consulted Ethics Framework that enables a more effective handling of the ethical dimension of innovation, with a special focus on the engagement of citizens in participative innovation, to the benefit of more relevant, fair and effective innovation activities.
In order to reach this overall objective, PRO-Ethics has the following specific objectives:

• To gather and systematise needs, requirements and values of citizens (including the underlying ethical principles) within participatory processes to improve access and avoid a technological divide
• To create and promote fair and gender sensitive interaction modes taking into account legal frameworks, governance structures and regulations, codes of practice, and tools (including IT Tools)\
• To test, pilot and assess novel participation configurations in three fields of action of RFOs‘ activities: Participation in innovation projects, participation in strategy development and participation in evaluation processes
• To validate findings in interactive learning formats and in dialogue with stakeholders and ethic bodies
• To secure a widespread take-up of the developed framework across the European Union (and beyond) by consulting, sharing, and promoting standards, principles, and guidelines