Data has the potential to improve decision-making, support innovation, and drive more sustainable food systems. Yet sharing data across organisations, sectors, and communities remains a complex challenge. Questions around trust, governance, privacy, interoperability, and ownership continue to limit the full value that data can offer.
To explore these challenges and identify practical solutions, FoodDataQuest has launched a new podcast series. The first episode brings together perspectives from two Horizon Europe sister projects, FoodDataQuest and Data4Food2030, to discuss the barriers and enablers of data sharing in real-world settings.
Hosted by Gabriéla Versteeg, Managing Director of EFFoST, the episode features Eleni Provopoulou from Netcompany and Dolores Ordóñez from AnySolution, who share experiences from their respective project pilots.
Eleni introduces FoodDataQuest’s hospital food service use case at the University Medical Centre Maribor in Slovenia. The pilot explores how kitchen, nutrition, patient, and clinical data can be connected to support better decision-making while ensuring sensitive patient information remains protected. The discussion highlights the importance of privacy-by-design approaches, role-based access to information, and the use of aggregated dashboards that provide valuable insights without exposing personal data.
Dolores presents the I4Data pilots within Data4Food2030, which support almond growers and wineries in the Balearic Islands. Her contribution focuses on the challenges of encouraging stakeholders to share production data and how trust, clear value propositions, and collaborative governance models can help overcome reluctance to participate.
Throughout the conversation, the speakers discuss common obstacles to data sharing, including organisational silos, limited interoperability between systems, concerns about data ownership, and the need for incentives that create value for all participants. They also examine how data spaces can provide a framework for trusted collaboration and how small-scale pilots can create the foundations for wider adoption.
The episode concludes with practical recommendations for organisations looking to develop data-sharing initiatives and reflections on what successful implementation looks like, from individual hospitals and cooperatives to larger, scalable data ecosystems.
The FoodDataQuest podcast series aims to showcase practical experiences, lessons learned, and innovative approaches that can help unlock the potential of data for a more sustainable, transparent, and resilient food system.
Listen to the first episode and discover how FoodDataQuest and Data4Food2030 are addressing one of the key challenges facing digital transformation in the agrifood sector today.
