"The goal of SUSFOOD is to reinforce the scientific cooperation between EU member and associated states in order to maximise the contribution of research to the development of more sustainable food systems: responding to the increasing demand for food to be met by increasing production sustainably and reducing losses and waste mitigating the impact on the environment combating obesity, malnutrition, and under-nutrition reducing inequalities between rich and poor individuals and populations improving the European agribusiness’s competitiveness.The scope of SUSFOOD encompasses the entire food supply chain with main focus on food chain sustainability beyond the farm gate, taking account of work pre-farm gate developed in other initiatives. It will cover processing, packaging, transport, retailing, food services, storage and consumer activities. It promotes a multi-disciplinary approach, from biology to food engineering, and social sciences.SUSFOOD will fulfil the following objectives: Enhance synergies between research programmes on sustainable food production and consumption Increase cooperation between the organisations in order to carry out ambitious research projects Maximise assets exploitation by pooling material and intellectual resources in the partners’ states Promote outputs of the network via dissemination and knowledge transfer activities to the wider community Support competitiveness and economic growth, with focus on small and medium enterprises.The concept of the project is to foster the coordination between the participants’ programmes through a need-driven four-step approach: Information exchange and mapping to improve mutual acquaintance and share of best practices Strategic orientation of research programmes to eliminate overlapping and tackle unaddressed and novel issues Joint activities to consolidate and harmonise partnership and outline common vision and agenda Calls for proposals to support joint strategic research activities."