Call for project 2014 Sustainable Food Systems Deadline for submission: 30th of June, 2014. The Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation is pleased to issue its 2014 international call for sustainable food system projects. To fund such projects, the Foundation has a total budget of 1 million. Applicants may submit project proposals from 1 st March 2014. Below you will find all the relevant information on the areas of research that will be considered, project eligibility and evaluation criteria, the timeline, the application procedure, and contact details. The Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation The Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation was established in 2010 in memory of Daniel Carasso, founder of Danone in France and Dannon in the USA, and his wife Nina. The Foundation is very much a family organization. On its Executive Committee sit its president, Marina Nahmias, daughter of Daniel and Nina Carasso, her family and individuals with expertise in their fields of work. 1 Mission Under the aegis of the Fondation de France, the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation works to fund projects in two areas of great importance for human development: - Food to sustain life. - Art to nourish the mind. Both art and food are central to the history of the Carasso family. Food was the driving force behind the Daniel Carasso saga. Art was his passion one shared by his wife Nina and their daughter, Marina. The Foundation seeks to use its financial support to: - Facilitate encounters and opportunities that bring together fields of enquiry whose paths do not always cross and make the previously impossible possible. - Spotlight innovative action and capitalize on good practices in order to share them as widely as possible.
Values The Foundation seeks to purvey the values that Daniel and Nina Carasso professed throughout their lives: - Curiosity - Tolerance - High standards - Energy Vision The Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation wishes to promote new ways of considering nourishment that are useful to human self-development and to the creation of conditions that make life more harmonious: - Because food systems and diets lie at the crossroads of economics, ecology, health, and social and cultural activities, they sustain life and are central to the issues at stake in sustainable development. - Because art can be a way for people to assert their place in society by helping all including the most vulnerable to look afresh at society and guide us towards a more tolerant world and more rewarding lives. The Foundation s Principles of Action 2 - Cooperation Mediation: The Foundation seeks to facilitate encounters and networking between actors. - Cooperation Synergies: The Foundation encourages not only institutions to work in partnership on the projects it funds, it tries to do so itself. In this way it hopes to foster collaborative ventures with organizations like foundations, voluntary groups, public bodies, and universities. - Capitalization Dissemination: The Foundation is attentive to project evaluation and impact measurement. It wishes to support the capitalization and dissemination of good practices and share them with other institutions, opinion leaders, and actors of change. - Impartiality: The Foundation acts with political and religious impartiality and in a spirit of open-mindedness.
Research Strategy Through its work the Foundation seeks to complement institutional stakeholders. Accordingly, and in line with its values, its objective is to support original, innovative research projects that are of a singular nature or address a significant risk or singularity. The Foundation promotes integrated, multidisciplinary approaches to food systems taken as a whole and seeks to help decompartmentalize disciplines and themes. Background to the Call A food system is the way in which people organize in order to produce, distribute, and consume their food. A food system includes all the processes required to feed a population: growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, transporting, marketing, consumption, and the disposal of food and food-related items. It also encompasses the inputs needed and outputs generated by each of those processes. Systems bring together a wide spectrum of players from producers and consumers to food companies, distribution outlets, governments, and international institutions. Feeding the world on a healthy diet while safeguarding the planet s resources is a vital challenge to which humanity must rise. Wide-ranging scientific findings show with growing certainty that current food systems pose serious problems of sustainability at several levels: - Environmental. Current agricultural practices degrade soils 1 ; increasingly consume, pollute and deplete groundwater 2 ; and emit around 30% of global greenhouse gases. - Economic. 500 million farmers in low- and middle- income countries are food insecure and fail to produce enough to sustain their livelihood. In high-income countries food insecurity and waste are on the increase. - Socio-cultural. The socio-cultural challenges of food systems are characterized by the uniformization of food habits and the nutritional transition, accompanied by a loss of cultural identity and a weakening of the social role of food. - Nutritional. Half of the world s population suffers from malnutrition. Around one billion people are undernourished, a further billion suffer from micronutrient deficiencies, and 1.4 billion are overweight or obese. 3 Although current food systems have enabled the production of sufficient food at the global level, they contribute to poor human health and deplete the natural resources vital to their own operation. They will eventually compromise gains made in recent decades and jeopardize humanity s ability to feed itself properly dangers that are made more acute by the world s growing population: there are today 7 billion mouths to feed, and there will be 1 According to the FAO, some 300 million hectares of land are so impoverished that it can no longer be farmed (GLASOLD study, FAO, 1992). 2 Agriculture accounts for 72% of the water used by humans
more than 9 billion by 2050. The predicted impact of climate change on agricultural productivity, particularly in many developing countries, will further compound the challenge of feeding the world adequately and sustainably. The food challenge requires rethinking and reworking today s modes of production and consumption. Against that background the scientific community and civil society propose a paradigm shift in order to enhance sustainable food systems 3. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and Bioversity International define sustainable food systems and diets in these terms: Sustainable food systems and diets are those with low environmental impacts which contribute to food and nutrition security and to healthy life for present and future generations. They are protective and respectful of biodiversity and ecosystems, culturally acceptable, accessible, economically fair and affordable, nutritionally adequate, safe and healthy, while optimizing natural and human resources. Objectives of the 2014 Call for Projects TOPIC 1: Understanding the different dimensions of sustainable food systems and their interactions Rationale: Food systems, from farm to fork, are diverse and complex. Indeed, their sheer complexity makes them difficult to understand particularly when their environmental, social, economic, and nutritional dimensions are considered simultaneously. However, it is crucial to understand food systems and the cause-and-effect links that tie them together in order to identify realistic, viable solutions for feeding people adequately and sustainably in the future. 4 The study of food systems requires a multidisciplinary approach. Interlinks are diverse. Understanding a food system as a whole with its multiple dimensions (environmental, social, economic and nutritional) and their interactions from production to consumption is a daunting challenge. However, it must be met if comprehensive solutions and effective action on the ground are to be developed. TOPIC 2: Assessing the sustainability of alternative food systems Rationale: Alternative food systems have been little studied compared to the dominant model based on conventional agriculture and globalized markets. It is important to determine whether alternative systems can address problems that the prevailing model fails to solve. 3 See http://www.fondationcarasso.org/en/reading-list
A rigorous assessment of the potential of sustainable alternative food systems that capture environmental, economic, social and nutritional outcomes should point to alternative, desirable directions in which the currently dominant current food system models should evolve. TOPIC 3: Developing and testing tools to describe and evaluate sustainable food systems Rationale: The emerging multidisciplinary approach to research into sustainable food systems requires the adoption of unified concepts and a common language. Indicators, methodologies, and terminology need to be harmonized in order to design tools that may be used across the scientific community working in the field of sustainable food systems and applying the emerging multidisciplinary approach. TOPIC 4: Open call Applicants can also propose exploratory projects of a particularly innovative nature, in line with the Foundation s research strategy. They should take into account the Foundation s Mission and Values as described in Section 1 above and in its website (www.fondationcarasso.org). Application Procedure A project can be submitted by a single organization or a consortium. Each project consortium should appoint a project coordinator 4. He or she will, on behalf of his or her organization and in any commissioned project, have the following role and responsibilities: 5 - Be the project consortium s prime contact with the Foundation until the closure of the project. - Submit the consortium s project. - Compile and submit consortium reports and other deliverables to the Foundation. - Ensure that all project milestones are met and deliverables submitted and take action in accordance with the project management plan if any consortium partner fails to meet requirements. - Inform the Foundation of any potential obstacle to project implementation. - Manage the funds that the Foundation grants to the consortium. Projects must be written in English. They must be submitted by project coordinators. Applicants should use the Proposal Form available at this address: http://www.fondationcarasso.org/en/applying-funding. Final, completed proposal forms and annexes must be sent by email to guilhem.soutou@fondationcarasso.org by the closing date with the following title Call for Research Project Food Systems. 4 Projects may be executed by organizations that come together in a consortium.
Timeline Proposal submission opening date 1st March 2014 Proposal submission closing date 30th June 2014 Proposals evaluated and selected (through End of September 2014 peer review) Projects begin December 2014 Selection Selection Process The Research Call secretariat assesses the eligibility of project proposals. Those considered eligible are then assessed and selected through a peer review process by a jury composed of highly qualified international researchers selected by the Foundation. The proposals selected by the jury are then submitted to the Foundation s Executive Committee for final approval. Eligibility Criteria 6 Before they can be evaluated and possibly selected by the jury, project proposals must first satisfy the following eligibility criteria: - Only non-profit organizations can benefit from the grant. They can apply as single organization or consortium. Private partners may be part of a consortium, but can not benefit from any part of the grant. Furthermore, projects should neither grant any private food chain company or business group preferential treatment nor distort competition among private stakeholders in the food chain. - Project proposal forms should be written in English and completed in full. - Projects should focus on one of the four topics. - Projects should not replicate any ongoing project supported by the Foundation. - Projects should aim to produce global public goods. Project results and outputs should be publicly available. - Project duration should be between 2 to 4 years. - Projects should use an integrated multidisciplinary approach.
- Projects should address food systems multiple dimensions (economic, social, nutritional, and environmental). - Research should include a results dissemination strategy to ensure that food system stakeholders have access to results. - With regard to Topic 2, the Foundation will only support consortiums that include field actors (private, NGO etc.) active in alternative food systems. Evaluation Criteria - Relevance of proposals to the Research Call s terms of reference. - Scientific quality and innovation. - Expected impact. - The experience and quality of project partners. - The soundness of the work plan, management structure and budget, and overall project feasibility. - Strength of projects results dissemination and stakeholder communication strategies. 7 Contract conditions All applicants must be able to commit to the following. Project Governance Where Foundation financing is greater than or equal to 50% of the total financing of the project, the Foundation may attend project steering committee meetings as an observer. In addition, all proposals for new partnerships relating to the project must be submitted to the Foundation prior to approval. Eligibility of Expenditure All expenditure and expenditure categories apart from permanent employee salaries and related overheads for public institutions are eligible, provided that project requirements justify them.
Reporting A report is requested on an annual basis. All reports should cover the previous civil year, from January to December inclusive. They should be sent to the secretariat by 28 th February of the following year. Annual reports should comprise an activity report and a financial report. Reports must be validated by the Foundation before the next instalment of the grant can be paid. The Foundation does not require a specific format for activity reports. - If project coordinators wish to use Foundation report formats, they may download them at this address: http://www.fondationcarasso.org/en/applying-funding - If a report uses a different format, the Foundation nevertheless requires it to include all the information requested in its own format. Financial reports must be in the same format as the one used in the grant application. Funding Payments are made in yearly tranches. Payment is dependent on the receipt and approval of the activity and financial reports. The amount of each bank transfer is discussed with the project coordinator on the basis of the yearly budget requirements. Grants are paid to the coordinator s organization, which is responsible for distributing it among partners according to the budget. 8 Procurement Policy Project partners agree to comply with the public purchasing procedures in force in countries. Communication The Foundation requires organizations to disseminate project results through communication channels such as scientific papers, posters, stakeholder involvement, course and training material, web-based tools, workshops, and direct end-user intervention. Researchers are encouraged to actively exploit the results of their research projects and make them available for use so that public benefit may be gained from the knowledge created. In return for grants, recipient consortiums agree to show the Foundation s logo on all inhouse or third-party media (CDs, DVDs, flyers, posters, websites, press packs, press releases, etc.) related to the project being supported. To that end, the Foundation will supply its logo. If media are not suitable for that purpose, they should carry the wording with the support of the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation or project supported by the Daniel and Nina
Carasso Foundation. The supplied logo must in no circumstances be altered. Organizations may display the logo only for the duration of the project or until they have used up their funding. They may not use the logo for any action other than ones related to the project. Funded organizations should send to the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation copies of the materials that bear its logo or which mention it. The Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation also reserves the right to highlight its contribution to the development of projects through heightened visibility (e.g. kakemono banners at conferences, public statements) and/or involvement in certain actions which are chosen in consultation with project leaders. Furthermore, funded organizations should agree to transmit the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation the documents (texts, photos, videos, music, etc.) that they used to promote their projects. The Foundation will use them copyright-free: - in internal and external communication materials; - at events that it organized. Intellectual Property Rights and Use and Access to Results All the results and new intellectual property rights (IPR) generated by Foundation-supported projects must enter into the public domain as far as the law allows. All the results and output must be openly and freely accessible to anyone interested in them. 9 Contact Guilhem Soutou Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation Sustainable Food System Program manager guilhem.soutou@fondationcarasso.org