Food & Business Global Challenges Programme

This programme provides grants to research that generates insights into the functioning of the global food system. These insights should contribute to solutions for improving local food security. Proposals should be submitted by consortia of researchers and various public and private partners from the Netherlands and at least one Low and Middle-Income Country. Dutch enterprises are especially encouraged to participate.

Purpose
There is an urgent and growing need for new knowledge that contributes to new insights, policies and practices to meet food security challenges. The Food & Business Global Challenges Programme wishes to encourage scientific research and innovation (covering technological, organisational, policy, and social innovations) that contributes to long-term access to affordable, safe and nutritious food for vulnerable and resource-poor populations in developing countries.

The inter- and trans-disciplinary research resulting from this Call for proposals focuses on food chain efficiency and sustainable production of quality food. International collaboration that meets both local and Dutch private interests is an important dimension for both topics and especially concerns businesses in the Agri&Food and Horticulture (and other food security related) sectors.

Who can apply 
Proposals should be submitted by consortia of research organisations and various public and private organisations from both the Netherlands and at least one Low and Middle-Income Country (LMIC). Dutch enterprises are especially encouraged to participate.

The consortium coordinator (who is the main applicant) should be a senior researcher with a PhD degree employed by the Dutch research institute (partner 1). Other consortium members should be at least one senior researcher from the LMIC research organisation (partner 2), and at least one representative of another (non-academic) public or private organisation, both from the Netherlands and the LMIC country involved (partners 3 and 4). Partner 3 and 4 can be from any public or private organisation that can be seen as an actor or stakeholder in food security. Additional partners from (other) LMIC or high income countries are welcomed.

What to apply for 
The maximum subsidy contribution requested may not exceed 600,000 euro for a four to five year period.Co-funding from private partners of at least 20% of the total project budget is a prerequisite. This may include costs of researchers, materials or an in-kind contribution.

Reimbursable costs in general include:

• Personnel costs of PhD and post-doc researchers;
• Knowledge, research and innovation costs;
• Activities organised by the consortium, such as workshops, capacity building and communication.

Reimbursable costs in LMICs only:

• Office space, basic facilities, overhead and depreciation costs;
• Consumables or administrative and technical assistance of the host institutions.

Criteria 
I Scientific quality:

• Originality of research question(s) and scientific approach;
• Potential to generate new knowledge;
• Feasibility and adequacy of research design and approach, including robustness of conceptual framework/experimental set-up, and coherence of hypotheses, research questions and methods.

II Relevance for development:

• Soundness of the problem analyses for the proposed research and in relation to the aim of this Call;
• Contribution of research questions and intended research results to the development issue at stake;
• Effectiveness and feasibility of proposed approach for knowledge utilization.

III Quality of collaboration:

• Strength of partnership and level of commitment of co-funding partners;
• Quality of final proposal development workshop;
• Coherence, synergy and integration of sub-projects.

Where two applications receive an identical priority rating and only one has for-profit co-funding, preference will be given to that application.

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