Sustainable Food

Which are the main EU sources of funding available? How do the calls work? What are the key points entities need to highlight in order to access them? The list of EU funding options for organisations working in the field of sustainable food and food sovereignty is extensive, but for those who don’t have a lot of experience in this area, there is also a long list of concerns and unknowns when it comes to applying for them.

For this reason, on Friday 19 January, the espai Agròpolis, a public-private partnership platform promoted by Barcelona City Council to transform the food system based on food sovereignty and agroecology values, organised an information session that looked at the key ideas and concepts to be taken into account, aimed at organisations from the sector. The session was run by Marta Rojas, an expert from the consultancy B-link with more than 15 years’ experience in European regulations, who gave an overview of the different programmes promoted by the European Commission (Life, Erasmus Plus, CERV, Horizon…) and offered some of the keys to monitoring the calls and preparing applications.

A diverse range of subjects and funding modalities

The priorities for the current period (2021-2027) which provide the best fit for the participating entities are mainly linked to the European Green Deal for the ecological transition and they include actions in fields ranging from energy and transport to agriculture and industry to reduce their environmental impact. So, as Marta Rojas explained, the Farm to Fork strategy, one of the most recently presented, aims to make food systems fair, healthy and sustainable and is aligned with the approaches of the entities on the Agròpolis platform. However, there is also space for them in lines that make reference to the digital transformation, the social economy (an economy that works for people) or European alliances and links with the rest of the world.

One of the aspects that should be taken into account when assessing the calls is the degree of specificity because “there are some that mark out very clearly the area of work they cover and the impact that the wining projects need to have – such as, for example, the Heritage Europe programme – but there are others, such as Erasmus +, Europa Creativa or Life, which are more flexible and open to different proposals”, explained Marta Rojas. However, it is also important to pay attention to the percentage of funding offered because there are some that require high levels of co-financing and others that fund up to 100% of costs, such as Heritage Europe which, precisely for this reason, is one of the ones with the highest participation levels.

Also, some pay the funds in advance and others pay after the project has been carried out and, for all these reasons, Marta Rojas underscored the need to have liquid assets and be able to make down payments. “All these variables needs to be understood and foreseen, and you also need to be able to show you have the necessary solvency because the reviews and examinations of the documents presented are exhaustive”.

A slow process where perseverance is key

Rojas summed up in a diagram the questions the entities need to ask themselves in order to assess their strengths and weaknesses when it comes to applying for these funds: “Preparing the application takes a lot of work which is why you need to weigh it up properly, but if you’ve done the work and, despite this, you are not awarded the funds, I recommend persevering and trying again the following year: it might be that you got a good score in one area and with the feedback they give, which is always very exhaustive, you’ll have the chance to improve on the weaker aspects”.

In order to focus our efforts and prioritise the programmes that are best suited to our organisation, Rojas also mentioned the level of competitiveness and success rates in previous years in relation to the number of proposals submitted. So, for example, Life is highly competitive because more people take part and there is less money available and a certain level of experience is required, though not as much as for Horizon, and the various Single Market Programme calls are also very competitive because they offer larger, albeit accessible, sums of money – normally around a million euro – with the challenge of building partnerships. In any case, Rojas recommends consulting projects that received subsidies in previous years in order to have them as a reference.

Finally, another interesting resource is the European Commission website which lists the entities that have taken part in the calls, and also has a space where calls are announced. So, Rojas pointed out, we can get in touch with other projects from other places so we can join together and form the consortiums required by lots of the programmes.

The experience of Espigoladors and Fundesplai: lessons learned, alliances and new horizons

Based on lived experience, Raquel Díaz from the Fundació Espigoladors, which works to put an end to food waste, highlighted the economic stability that the entity has built up over the past four years and, above all, the learning acquired through working with other agents, both local and from other parts of Europe, and from linking the world of academia with the work of social entities: “When you see what is happening in Dublin, Athens or Utrecht, for example, and that the challenges they face are similar to ours, you feel less isolated and you learn a lot, and I should also stress the value of the knowledge we can contribute to the academic world from our practical experience, to get them to go beyond the theory”.

For her part, Laura Calabuig, representing Fundesplai, which focuses on educating children and young people and sustainability, added to the benefits highlighted by Raquel Díaz, and also outlined the challenges and difficulties: “We need to bear in mind that the language used to manage all these funds is English and that the information to be managed is very specific and strict, and also you need to manage expectations and be patient because in our case it was two years from applying for funds to seeing the results, but if it goes well, it’s really worth it”.

Other resources for finding out more

Information sessions like this one organised by Agròpolis are a good first point of call for getting guidance, but once you know what the different options are, you should bear in mind that there are information portals for each of the programmes with lots of answers and specific information sessions. Furthermore, the Generalitat de Catalunya’s Ministry for Foreign Action and European Union also has a website in Catalan with details of each of the programmes.