F&A Next: where food innovation meets purpose
This week, the tenth edition of F&A Next took place, reaffirming the power of collaboration to accelerate the food transition.
Published on May 23, 2025
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Mauro swapped Sardinia for Eindhoven and has been an IO+ editor for 3 years. As a GREEN+ expert, he covers the energy transition with data-driven stories.
Climate change, biodiversity loss, and sustainability are straining our food system. And if innovation and policies can help address many of the issues connected to them, the food transition needs a unity of purpose. For ten editions, the F&A Next has offered a platform to think about the future of food and stimulate connections across the value chain.
F&A Next is one of Europe’s leading agrifood tech events, hosted in Wageningen. The tenth edition of the summit, celebrated with an opening laser show, unpacked the most pressing topics in a two-day program full of panel discussions, keynote speeches, and knowledge sessions. The summit, hosted in Wageningen University & Research (WUR) campus’ Omnia building, gathered over a crowd of 800 participants representing startups, investors, and corporates.
Increasing the food system’s resilience
The topic of resilience resonated across all of the panels and keynotes. Climate change and an ever-shifting geopolitical scenario require a high dose of resilience from the food sector. To this extent, the opening session with the keynote delivered by Lieutenant General Richard Nugee set the tone.
Touching upon the crises of our time, the Lieutenant General emphasized how food security is increasingly becoming a problem, generating instabilities across different geographies. “Food security is about the security of a nation, of its livelihood, and the kind of life we want to live,” he stressed. Adopting innovation and fostering cooperation between countries pays the dividends of increased food resilience, not only against climate change but also against crime and non-state actors.
Yet, the urgency of finding ways to prepare the food system to absorb all of these shocks resonated in many of the other F&A Next sessions. Panelists and attendees from all over the world acknowledged that while a transition is already underway, it is pivotal for all of the industry's actors to come together and find the right solutions.
Networking
At the heart of F&A Next is the idea of bringing all these actors together and forging impactful connections. Ethem Tokgözlü, country advisor for Invest in Turkey, says, “F&A Next allows us to establish and strengthen international cooperation and to connect with the Wageningen ecosystem. ”
“Events like this are a good opportunity to get out of your bubble, and pitch your idea to people who are part of the value chain but might have a different perspective. At the same time, it is extremely inspiring to see what other companies are doing,” says Mike Henske, co-founder of Aardaia. The company is working on breeding aardaker–a tuber cultivated in the past, forgotten due to the rise of potato farming, given its high protein content.
At the same time, attendees valued the quality of the crowd: Julien Winkel, chief commercial officer at soil analysis startup Soilytix. “There is everyone you would want to talk to in the sector,” he underlines.
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The role of craftsmen
Innovation and change in the food system can start from Michelin-starred restaurant kitchens. De Nieuwe Winkel’s chef Emile van der Staak certainly is on board for a change. He brought to F&A Next’s stage his journey in becoming the world’s best vegetarian chef. In doing so, he emphasized the role of craftsmen because of their knowledge and relationships with the materials they work with.
“The craftsman in the protein transition is mostly overlooked. But we are those who know the essentials of how to make delicious food. We may talk for hours about why this transition is needed, but if what we make doesn’t taste good, it probably won’t be successful,” he stated. The doors of his kitchen are open. De Nieuwe Winkel has an in-house R&D facility where new ingredients can be experimented with. “I’m looking forward to collaborating,” added Van Der Staak.
In charge of the future of food
To enrich the summit experience, attendees could immerse themselves in Food System Nexus, a virtual reality (VR) cooperative game. In this VR experience, structured in three rounds, participants are in charge of the food system's future, making choices from 2025 until 2100.
As explained by Orestis Spyrou, one of the game developers, the purpose of this game is to spark discussion and collaboration among the different players. Before making each choice, participants discuss what pathway to take among the options presented by the game. While every choice comes with advantages and disadvantages, time is key: the longer the discussion among participants, the lower the impact of the decision.
Rising innovators
An essential part of F&A Next is the Next Heroes in Food and Agtech program. As part of this initiative, ten startups–five in a seed and pre-seed stage and five at a later growth phase–competed before a jury of industry experts, pitching their ideas and getting feedback on the spot.
Two startups, one from each category, won the Feike Sijbesma Sustainable Innovation Award. The Danish Agrobiomics received the prize for the early-stage category. This company uses natural biologicals to enhance crop resilience. In the late-stage category, Vivici, led by Stephan Van Sint Fiet, won the accolade. The company is leveraging precision fermentation to create milk proteins.
This prize is named after and handed in by Feike Sijbesma, the former CEO of the multinational DSM firm. He is renowned for making a significant impact with sustainable innovations as a global corporate leader. Each startup received a €12,500 cash prize.
Rediscovering a connection with Earth–and the others
The summit's closing session brought a different perspective on business. Speaker Nikki Trott, CEO advisor, investor, and author of the forthcoming book ‘Sacred Business’. In her vision, business as it is is the cause for the challenges we face, yet business can also get us out of them, establishing a new paradigm.
Among the many shifts the author pointed out, one resonates with F&A Next’s nature: from competition to symbiosis. “An example is what we have done with Rooted–an investment fund, ed.--joining forces with Whiteland Venture partners, that could have been our competitors. Joining forces, we can drive more impact,” she said.
Reshaping the food system will take more years. F&A Next has been a platform for such a change in the past decade. It now looks at the decade ahead as it will welcome back its visitors on May 20 and 21, 2026.
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