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Food Forum

Working together today on the food of tomorrow

Metres below sea level. That’s where you’ll find Food Forum: a spectacular pavilion with just its (green) roof at sea level. Visitors to Floriade Expo 2022 will learn about Flevoland – Europe’s food garden – in an inspiring exhibition. We will work with businesses from Flevoland to show how we are working on the food system of the future. Business visitors will have access to an extensive business-to-business programme and can organise their own meetings too. Food Forum will remain in place after Floriade ends, becoming a space where stakeholders – producers, students, entrepreneurs and researchers – from every part of the food chain can meet. Together, they will be able to develop innovative plans for the sustainable food supplies of the future and also do research to establish how to implement their plans profitably. Food Forum will provide them with an inspiring place to do this – at the bottom of the former Zuiderzee.

An innovative building

The Flevoland Food Forum pavilion at Floriade Expo 2022 will give visitors a flavour of life in Flevoland: more than four metres below sea level. The ground floor is light and transparent, just like water, and has been constructed largely from reclaimed materials. Natural materials dominate the upstairs part of the building, showing how fertile Flevoland’s soil is but at sea level. This will enable visitors to experience the space of Flevoland for themselves. The pavilion is all about innovation, including natural shade and breathing wall elements. The building illustrates Flevoland’s history too. It proves that people aren’t afraid to make innovative choices, because anything is possible here at the bottom of the former Zuiderzee.

A base camp for ideas and action

Flevoland is one of the world’s most productive crop production areas and people there have always been open to innovation too. So, what better place to develop a healthy food system for the future? On this journey of discovery, experts – ranging from farmers to policy makers, from students to academics and from retailers to chefs – will meet in Food Forum at Floriade Park. We will all put our heads together and come up with concrete, feasible and profitable solutions between us. Subjects like short chain, food and lifestyle will be put on the agenda of inspiring meetings and food professionals will also be able to rent a space in Food Forum for meetings, events or conferences about food-system innovations. For example, alternative proteins, precision agriculture, agroforestry and true pricing.

Experimenting and learning

Food Forum is part of the Flevo Campus,which is the Flevoland knowledge centre for the food system of the near future. The Flevo Campus and Floriade Park are both conveniently located: the first on the border of the Randstad conurbation with its many consumers and the food-producing polders and the second at the entrance to Floriade Expo 2022. Entrepreneurs, students, researchers and developers will be able to meet in Food Forum and generate new ideas. All of these ideas will then be developed, researched and tested in Flevoland. After this, they will be adapted, tested again, possibly rejected and then improved, until they become innovations that are ready for entrepreneurs to market, whether they’re forward-look Flevoland farmers or students who have graduated in the last few years.

Don’t just talk, taste too

From day 1, Food Forum will inspire visitors with its Menu for the future, which is made up of honest, healthy, delicious and flavoursome food. Everything is seasonal, grown locally, sustainable and produced for a good price and it’s also clear where all the ingredients used come from. In Food Forum, we will show visitors that it really is possible: enough food for everyone – food that’s tasty, safe, healthy and modern – without having to exhaust the planet to produce it.

Onwards and upwards to the future

Food Forum will bustle with activity and everything and everyone around it will show a passion for innovation. But that’s not all: we’re going to make innovation happen. Hands will come out of pockets and spades will go into the soil. Because here in Flevoland, we’re all about addressing issues, thinking about them and then resolving them. We all have a higher goal in mind. We want there to be enough food for everyone; food that’s, safe, healthy, modern, reasonably priced and grown with respect for the planet.