Toward a resilient food supply of Brussels Capital region: possible scenarios based on a barriers analysis and an explorative prospective approach

Brussels Food 2050 (BruFo2050), is an explorative prospective research project that gathers two teams with an history of collaboration and complementary experiences: Sytra from UCLouvain and Sfere, from KULeuven. The research is financed by the Prospective Research Call framed by Innoviris.  

This three-years long project aims at diving into the analysis and understanding of the Brussels food supply system.  

Based on experience and previous studies led by Sytra and Sfere (within the Futures4Food project (Belspo) or for the Good Food Strategy) we will be addressing the six following questions:   

1. How does the Brussel food supply system operate? 
2. How sustainable is the current system? 
3. What are the barriers of this situation towards a more sustainable system? 
4. What can the future look like by (not) acting on these barriers? 
5. How to progress toward a resilient food supply system? 
6. How to represent the Brussels’ food supply system?​ 

The whole work will be done according to two key methodological choices: we will apply and enter in this research by i) a value-chain approach and with ii) a representativity lens. This last methodological choice – the representativity aspect (question six) – is transversal and will be specifically studied through a thesis work led by the Sfere team.  

The prospective exercice will be based on a participative barrier analysis and the futures scenario constructed on the evolution or suppression of those barriers. This exercise will then be followed by a resilience assessment in order to progress toward a resilient food supply system by 2050.   

Few innovative points we are looking forward to developing and implementing in this research:  

• The value chain approach to discuss Brussels food supply system, 

• The representativity dimension in participative and prospective process, 

• The combination of quantitative and qualitative scenario design, 

• A resilience assessment for the identified scenarios, 

• A science for policy interface that is proposed by Innoviris. 

 The updates to the project and the different deliverables will be published on this website. 

Research questions