Start date: 01/12/2022

Duration: 36 months

Topic: HORIZON-CL6-2022-GOVERNANCE-01-10

Total budget: EUR 4 000 000,00

Website: https://drg4food.eu/

The combination of food and data with digital responsibility can create a fair and trustworthy environment where people can take control and participate actively in the food system. The European Commission aims to ensure high levels of food safety and plant and animal health in the EU through Farm to Fork measures and adequate monitoring throughout the entire food chain. To achieve these goals, there is a need for (open) data integrated into a stable, standardized, and trusted data ecosystem and infrastructure, which generates insights, provides verified and immutable information, and maintains reliable access. However, gaps still exist across all components of the food system, and technology adoption is viewed with increasing skepticism due to the ever-increasing complexity of the technological, social and economic landscape, data breaches, identity theft, and biased AI decisions.

The overall goal of DRG4Food project is to achieve trust in a data-driven food system by implementing Digital Responsibility Goals for the food sector. This will enable new levels of innovation, for example in food safety, sustainability, personalized nutrition, reduction of food waste and fair conditions throughout the entire food chain. The programme works on a clear strategic roadmap (a new virtual food system), a set technological enablers, demonstration of solutions, a structured funding programme with open calls, and measures to guide and support the food ecosystem of third party beneficiaries, citizens, stakeholders.

DRG4Food maintains the perspective that technology is not a means to an end, but acts merely as an empowering enabler, providing the means to achieve a wide variety of innovative and valuable use cases. Use cases that promise to serve a broader audience, provided that adequate access also is considered as a prerequisite. Currently, however, technology is primarily developed from the perspective and needs of corporations and / or authorities- a limitation that risks perpetuating or further exacerbating the above-mentioned lack of trust within the markets that they serve. With a more diverse and human-centric driven perspective we believe the new use cases will emerge and the technology development required to realise them will contribute to a more sustainable ecosystem that is “trustworthy by default”. To truly design for trust, the entire chain of activities and underlying assumptions towards developing technology must be based on fundamental values like responsibility, privacy and user control – especially when dealing with valuable and sensitive food data. The starting point of all assumptions needs to be the user and their values – not a business model or (legitimate) state interests.