Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG – German Research Foundation) established the new Priority Programme ‘Sustainability and Resilience of Agri-Food Chains in Times of Multiple Crises? Towards a Joint and Critical Understanding – Agri-Food Chains’ (SPP 2575) in March 2025. The programme is designed to run for six years and comprises two funding periods of three years each. Proposals are now invited for the first three-year funding period.

The Priority Programme aims to find answers to the question how agri-food chains can be both sustainable and resilient in times of multiple crisis. It is intended to develop an integrated, conceptual understanding of the entanglement between sustainability and resilience in agri-food chains. At the same time, it seeks to create integrated methodological and empirical approaches to analyse sustainability and resilience in these chains, and establish an interdisciplinary research network focusing on sustainability and resilience in agri-food chains.

The research will focus on four hotspot regions: Germany, Poland, India and Tanzania. To be considered for funding, each project must focus on at least one of these regions. Generic/modelling projects are also welcome if the proposal shows very clearly how the developed methods can be applied to specific challenges and case studies in these hotspot regions.

The thematic focus is particularly on the following research avenues:

1. Sustainability-resilience frictions and synergies.
2. Inequalities within the chain and related regions: sustainability and resilience for whom?
3. Integrating externalities using interdisciplinary whole-chain perspectives.
4. New perceptions of risks and uncertainties.
5. Decentring perspectives on resilience and sustainability in value chains.

Projects are invited from the fields of human geography, business administration, sociology, economics and agricultural economics, agricultural policy, environmental and social anthropology, historical sciences, environmental humanities, development studies and neighbouring disciplines. Interdisciplinary tandem proposals are particularly encouraged.

Eligible to apply are researchers who work in Germany, or at a German research institution abroad, and who have completed their academic training (usually with a doctorate). In justified cases, the participation of researchers based outside Germany is also possible.

Funding is available for a period of three years and covers project-related costs such as personnel, materials and instrumentation.

Before writing a proposal, interested investigators should participate in the DFG Roundtable meeting on 23 June 2025 in Cologne, where further details on the background of the SPP 2575 and the application process will be given. Registrations for the roundtable are open until 31 May 2025.

The deadline for the submission of project proposals is 15 October 2025.