The European Commission adopted a Communication on a new Strategic Approach to Research and Innovation for competitive, resilient and sustainable agriculture, forestry, rural areas and food systems. This strategic document brings together two closely interlinked frameworks, to guide future research, innovation, deployment and uptake across the entire agri-food sector. These frameworks are AgRI 2040, focusing on agriculture, forestry and rural areas, and Food 2040, focusing on food systems, including fisheries and aquaculture.
The Communication aims to strengthen the agri-food innovation ecosystem from early-stage research and innovation to deployment and market uptake, and to accelerate the uptake of knowledge and innovation across the entire sector. It puts greater emphasis on users’ challenges and needs and on the delivery of real impact on the ground by bringing together multiple actors including end users, researchers and businesses, to co-create, test and demonstrate solutions in real-world settings. This will also help startups, scaleups and SMEs to move promising innovations closer to the market.
This Communication draws on insights from the public consultations supporting AgRI 2040 and Food 2040 as summarized in the Staff Working Document.
Resources
- AgRI 2040
- Food 2040
- Future-proofing EU Agri-Food through research and innovation: Summary of the consultation results (12 p)
- Building Food 2040: stakeholder input for the new EU Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda for Food Systems European Commission Report (17 p)
- Staff Working Document: Analytical overview of the achievements of the 2016 strategic approach to agricultural research and innovation and Food 2030 research and innovation framework and insights from stakeholder consultation activities (91 p)
- EU AgRI 2040 Conference 24-25 September 2026. Brussels
* 25/09 Partnerships for research and innovation that foster competitive, resilient and sustainable agrifood systems in Europe and beyond: How to build strong strategic partnerships within the EU and beyond? What are successful examples?
New Strategic Approach to Research and Innovation
The European Commission’s new Strategic Approach to Research and Innovation (26 p.) places global cooperation, inclusive governance, knowledge brokerage and multi-actor innovation at the centre of future agricultural R&I.
"In 2023, EU agriculture and food systems generated more than EUR 1 trillion in added value and employed around 30 million people (15% of all jobs in the EU2). This includes 4.8 million people employed in 309 000 businesses in the food and drink industry, the EU’s largest manufacturing sector that delivered EUR 1.5 trillion in turnover and EUR 296 billion in value added. As the world’s largest agri-food exporter, the EU recorded a EUR 50 billion agri-food trade surplus in 2025." (page 2)
This creates a role for GFAiR as a global convening and brokerage mechanism: connecting the EU with Regional Fora, NARS, farmer organisations, universities, CGIAR and other innovation actors; facilitating equitable participation in research agenda-setting; and helping translate international research investments into locally relevant Collective Actions.
"The new roadmap agreed between the African Union and the EU on ‘Food and Nutrition Security and Sustainable Agriculture’ (FNSSA), together with the related International Research Consortium should provide a framework for identifying, with the African Union and related partners, common areas on which to focus. Cooperation with other partners to address similar challenges in agriculture, forestry and rural areas, such as India or the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, could be further explored." (page 12)
This is reinforced by the Communication's emphasis on governance that integrates different forms of knowledge and perspectives, inclusive stakeholder engagement, youth and gender, and stronger links between research and policymaking. In this sense, GFAiR can help ensure that international cooperation under AgRI 2040 is not simply EU research transferred to partner countries, but genuinely co-created research and innovation responding to priorities identified by national and regional actors.
The Communication is equally significant for National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS) because its proposed innovation model closely corresponds to the functions NARS must perform: linking research, farmers, extension and advisory services, education, private enterprise, policymakers and markets.
The Commission stresses that innovation must move beyond individual projects through scaling out, scaling up and scaling deep, and argues that farmers are more likely to adopt innovations when they are co-created with them, tested under real-life conditions and supported through advisory services and peer-to-peer exchange. This provides a strong rationale for engaging NARS as national innovation-system partners rather than merely research implementers. Their research stations, extension links, testing facilities, universities and relationships with producers can provide the institutional infrastructure for Living Labs, farmer-led experimentation, validation of traditional knowledge and adaptation of innovations to local conditions.
Particularly relevant to GFAiR’s current work, AgRI 2040 explicitly calls for the development or reintroduction of “neglected and underutilised species” as climate-smart, resource-efficient, resilient and diverse crops.
"The potential of plant breeding, knowledge of seeds and plant varieties, biotechnology and genetic resources should be further leveraged. This includes supporting breeding activities, as well as the development or reintroduction of climate-smart, resource-efficient, resilient, resistant and diverse varieties, including neglected and underutilised species, suited to a wide range of conditions, with due consideration of the legal41 and policy context." (page 16-17)
Extract from the consultation results
Up to 88% of the respondents strongly or somewhat agreed with the four proposed mechanisms to strengthen research and innovation (R&I) at EU and international level to address global challenges in agriculture, forestry and rural areas: (page 10)
- closer public-public cooperation and alignment of agendas between the EU, Member States and Associated Countries;
- enhanced public-private collaboration with business and philanthropic actors;
- deeper partnerships with international organisations and third countries;
- stronger cross-disciplinary and cross sectoral collaboration (for example on One Health, the bioeconomy, biotechnology and the blue economy).
Extract from the Staff Working Document
The Staff Working Document provides a fairly clear set of lessons for how agricultural research and innovation (R&I) should be strengthened at international level. The most relevant elements are:
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Treat international cooperation as a core R&I function, not an add-on. The Commission argues that climate change, biodiversity loss, soil degradation, water scarcity and food insecurity are inherently cross-border challenges. International cooperation is therefore needed to accelerate innovation uptake, exchange knowledge and co-develop solutions adapted to local needs. The document notes that third-country partners participated in 34% of relevant Horizon 2020 projects and 19% of current Horizon Europe projects.
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Build long-term international R&I partnerships around jointly agreed priorities. The EU–AU FNSSA Partnership is presented as a flagship model: it combines joint research, innovation, capacity building and knowledge exchange around sustainable agriculture, nutrition-sensitive food systems, markets and trade, climate resilience and innovation uptake. The Commission has mobilised more than €125.5 million for 20 collaborative projects through this cooperation. Several projects began in 2020: FOODLAND | InnoFoodAfrica | HealthyFoodAfricaEWA – BELT | SustainSAHEL | SustInAfrica | UPSCALE | Soils4Africa
- Move from temporary projects towards permanent or networked international research mechanisms. Particularly important is the International Research Consortium (IRC-FNSSA).
"Its establishment has transformed FNSSA from a coordination platform into a long-term, inclusive mechanism for joint AU-EU research governance."
Together with the forthcoming FNSSA Roadmap 2027–2036, it is expected to support
innovation, policy alignment and sustainable development across both continents.
CEA-FIRST further supports this by reducing research fragmentation, developing a common knowledge platform, analysing R&I activities and establishing thematic working groups that feed evidence into high-level policy dialogue.
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Strengthen NARS and Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS). The AKIS4FNSSA project is a Horizon Europe research initiative that builds a shared African and European agricultural knowledge network to support sustainable food security. The envisaged impact is to strengthen the AU–EU agrifood systems R&I governance framework by evolving the IRC into an enduring infrastructure and a community of practice that drives agricultural innovation in Africa. AKIS4FNSSA is a shared African and European knowledge investment into a productive, innovative-driven and inclusive agricultural innovation system supporting the FNSSA Partnership.
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Use multi-actor and place-based approaches internationally. International cooperation increasingly supports place-based innovation and AKIS, while Horizon cooperation promotes multi-actor approaches and capacity building. CANALLS (Driving agroecological transitions in the humid tropics of Central and Eastern Africa through traNsdisciplinary Agroecology Living LabS) provides a concrete African example: eight agroecology Living Labs connect researchers, farmers, advisory services,
communities and policymakers and engage more than 20,000 farmers and value-chain actors. This is a way of connecting science, policy and practice.
- Connect international research to policy and investment rather than ending at knowledge generation. PRIMA - The Partnership for Research and Innovation in the Mediterranean Area - demonstrates such model: countries pool resources around a common R&I strategy and competitive calls. Between 2018 and 2025 it supported 2,900 beneficiaries through 305 projects, illustrating how a long-term intergovernmental partnership can mobilise scientific communities, public institutions and private actors around common challenges.
- Improve access of smaller and less-connected actors to international R&I. Cascade funding can finance SMEs, farmers and other small actors to test and validate research results, while Living Labs and lighthouses allow innovations to be tested under real conditions.
The PREMIERE project adds training, capacity building, networking, brokerage and even seed funding for proposal development, specifically to widen participation of organisations with little previous experience in collaborative projects. PREMIERE is a European Union funded project that aims to strengthen the multi-actor approach by supporting the development of more relevant, coherent, and well-prepared project proposals. Handbook #2 is the second in PREMIERE’s series of practical guides for multi-actor proposal teams. It’s a companion to the forthcoming, shorter How-to Guide on the same topic and to PREMIERE’s webinar on this subject (available soon).
The role of regional fora
GFAiR through its global coordination and network along with the six Regional Fora can contribute to Food 2040 by acting as the bridge between the EU’s global R&I ambitions and the priorities, capacities and innovation systems of their regions. Building on the Food 2030 experience, they can help co-define research agendas, connect NARS and AKIS actors, identify locally relevant food-system challenges, mobilise multi-actor partnerships, and channel evidence from farmers, researchers, advisory services, private sector and policymakers into international R&I programming.
GFAiR and Regional Fora together could help Food 2040 avoid fragmented, project-by-project cooperation by aggregating national priorities, facilitating cross-country and South–South learning, supporting regional Living Labs and Communities of Practice, and ensuring that EU-funded research is better aligned with regional strategies and more effectively taken up through NARS, extension, education and policy systems.
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