EIT Food

Improving food together

EIT Food is Europe’s leading food innovation initiative, working to make the food system more sustainable, healthy and trusted.

 

Mission

We need to future proof our food. So EIT Food is on a mission to build an inclusive and innovative community where the consumer is actively involved.

This is achieved through our six strategic objectives: 

  1. Overcome low consumer trust - supporting European citizens in the transition towards a smart food system that is inclusive and reassuring
  2. Create consumer-valued food for healthier nutrition - enabling individuals to make informed and affordable personal nutrition choices
  3. Build a consumer-centric connected food system - developing a digital food supply network with consumers and industry as equal partners
  4. Enhance sustainability through resource stewardship - developing solutions to transform the traditional ‘produce-use-dispose’ model into a circular bio-economy
  5. Educate to engage, innovate and advance - providing ‘food system’ skills for students, entrepreneurs and professionals through advanced training programmes
  6. Catalyse food entrepreneurship and innovation - fostering innovation at all stages of business creation

Download our Strategic Agenda for 2018 - 2024 here.

Our Approach

EIT Food will achieve its mission by:

  • Creating and scaling-up agrifood startups to deliver new food innovations and businesses
  • Developing talents and leaders to transform the food system
  • Launching new innovative products and ingredients to deliver healthier and more sustainable food
  • Engaging the public so that they can become the agents of change in the food system

 

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Our Community

EIT Food has six strategic objectives:

  1. Overcome low consumer trust: support Europeans in the transition towards a smart food system that is inclusive and trusted;
  2. Create consumer valued food for healthier nutrition: enable individuals to make informed and affordable personal nutrition choices;
  3. Build a consumer-centric connected food system: develop a digital food supply network with consumers and industry as equal partners;
  4. Enhance sustainability: develop solutions to transform the traditional ‘produce-use-dispose’ model into a circular bio-economy;
  5. Educate to engage, innovate and advance: provide ‘food system’ skills for students, entrepreneurs and professionals through advanced training programmes and open online courses, and
  6. Catalyse food entrepreneurship and innovation: foster innovation at all stages of business creation.

EIT Food aims to boost the skills and entrepreneurial spirit in the sector and unlock the potential of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), which in turn will accelerate innovation, create jobs, benefit businesses and increase Europe’s competitiveness.

EIT Food aims to, among others:

  1. Create 86 and support 533 start-ups within seven years, attracting in total EUR 191.6 million.
  2. Train over 400 graduates from EIT-labelled Master's programmes and have 285 000 participants overall in educational programmes over seven years,
  3. Develop 398 new or improved products, services, and processes by 2024, and
  4. Have 147 000 citizens participating in an annual food Trust Measuring Tool over the seven years.
This will be achieved by building upon the four pillars of EIT Food:

EIT Food Innovation Hubs 

The pan-European EIT Food Knowledge and Innovation Community (Innovation Community) is headquartered in Leuven/Belgium.

Regional innovation hubs

EIT Food is structured around five Innovation Hubs in

  • Reading (with partners from the UK, Ireland and Iceland),
  • Warsaw (with partners from Eastern Europe and Nordic countries),
  • Madrid (with partners from Spain, Italy and Israel),
  • Leuven (with partners from Belgium, France and Switzerland) and
  • Munich (with partners from Germany and the Netherlands).

Download here the EIT Food Factsheet.

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