The European Green Deal and its farm-to-fork strategy have made food system sustainability an EU policy priority, with the aim of making the EU's current food system fairer, healthier and more environmentally friendly. Notably, the farm-to-fork strategy highlights action areas for food supply chain operators, which give rise to both opportunities and challenges. Innovation in sustainability-enhancing products and practices is playing an increasingly important role in this transition to a sustainable food system; such innovation creates value for both companies and society and gives companies a competitive advantage. However, there is limited information on operator-level sustainability initiatives across the food supply chain. Importantly, to understand how regulations can effectively support this transition, policymakers must understand the drivers of and barriers to innovative sustainability initiatives. They must also be aware of how these initiatives work in practice and the expected implications and trade-offs in terms of the economic, social and environmental sustainability dimensions. This report attempts to bring together evidence on and provide a comparative assessment of sustainability innovation and innovative initiatives adopted by private operators in the EU food supply chain. The report's analyses are based on microdata collected through an online survey of 426 representatives of EU food chain operators, industry associations and other related organisations. The results show that most of the operators surveyed had put in place a range of sustainability initiatives of different natures, such as process innovations, product innovations, technological/digital innovations, organisational innovations, marketing innovations and logistic process innovations. Impacts in the environmental dimension were the main sustainability improvement expected by respondents, followed by impacts in the social and economic dimensions. Market-related factors (demand and supply requirements) were found to be the main drivers of sustainability initiatives, followed by meeting regulatory requirements. The barriers to developing and implementing sustainability innovations most commonly indicated by respondents were a lack of economic resources, qualified human capital, technical resources, knowledge, a sustainability culture, public policy support, clarity in regulations and recognition by consumers or the market. The majority of the sustainability initiatives introduced relied on internal research and development and vertical collaboration with other actors in the food chain. Many respondents used indicators to measure the performance of sustainability innovations, but the coverage of the sustainability dimensions was heterogeneous. In terms of the performance of the sustainability initiatives adopted, the results indicate that the initiatives generated net-positive sustainability gains. At the same time, there were trade-offs between the sustainability dimensions. While the sustainability initiatives implemented generally had different sustainability impacts, they did not all result in net gains in all sustainability dimensions. Overall, respondents' most common perception about the transition of the current food system towards sustainability was that this process was just beginning but progressing well.
