Q&A: What is on the menu of the EUâs new Vision for Agriculture and Food?
What is the Vision for Agriculture and Food proposed by the EU?
The EUâs , on 19 February, can be seen as a for the direction of European agricultural and food policy over the next five years and beyond towards 2040. Christophe Hansen, , described the Vision as a âshared roadmap for future initiativesâ.
A brainchild of Commission president von der Leyen, the new roadmap was built on the recommendations of the , a multistakeholder forum launched in January 2024 (See the question below for more details on the dialogue).
As set out in commissioner Hansenâs , the Vision was presented in the first 100 days of the new administration's time in office as part of efforts to ensure the âlong-term competitiveness and sustainability of our farming and food sector within the boundaries of our planet.â
How is the Vision relevant?
First and foremost, the Vision will guide all future thinking on agrifood policy. It will essentially â the and part of the Green Deal policy package â in with the economic realities of farming.
The Vision will play a key role in dictating how the (CAP), the EUâs farming subsidy programme, looks after the current iteration runs out in 2027. Currently worth a third of the EU budget, the CAP is renegotiated every 7 years, with talks opening years ahead of the deadline. In the summer, the Commission is due to present a proposal for how the CAP might look in the future.
With a for many of the EUâs green targets, the next five years will decide whether the EU will achieve the targets set out in its policy programme. The European agricultural sector is responsible for and also a , so getting farmers on board is vital if the EU wants to stand a chance of achieving its green goals.
However, that is . EU farmers are still reeling from the double whammy of the followed immediately by , leaving them squeezed between and falling prices. Farmers are becoming more frustrated with what they describe as the , coupled with concerns over their weak bargaining position in the food supply chain.
These escalating tensions drove EU farmers , and while tensions have calmed for now, they are still . Against this backdrop, the Vision is a key part of ongoing efforts to temper in the agrifood sector by offering farmers a clear path forward.
How did the Vision come about?
The European Commission announced in September 2023 that it would launch a The dialogue group consisted of 29 agrifood stakeholders from all sides of the supply chain, including farmersâ groups, civil society and industry.
The idea was to get stakeholders in the agricultural supply chain â everyone from producers and processors, through to NGOs and industry â around one table to find compromises in an effort to foster in the sector.
The dialogue centred around several core questions, chief among them how to guarantee a fair standard of living for farmers while also ensuring the sector fits within planetary boundaries. The group examined ways to maximise the potential of technological innovations, ways to lighten the bureaucratic load on farmers and ways to make the sector more competitive. The latter two points will be
The dialogue was guided by an independent chair, German researcher , and conducted in secret to encourage open discussion. The group met regularly over a period of seven months to discuss their differences and write a shared report on the future prospects of the sector.
Political pressure mounted on the talks as they fell squarely in the middle of the farmersâ protests in January 2024, further adding to the challenge.
Against the odds, the group published their in September and presented an assessment of the challenges and opportunities facing the sector, as well as a set of policy recommendations. These recommendations are set to form the basis of the upcoming Vision.
What are key proposals in the Vision?
The is orientated around four fundamental priority areas. These include focusing on creating an agrifood sector that is: âattractive and predictableâ with incomes that enable farmers to thrive; âcompetitive and resilientâ in the face of rising global competition and shocks; âfuture-proofâ and functioning within planetary boundaries; and lastly one which âvalues food, fair working and living conditionsâ, as well as âvibrant and well-connected rural and coastal areasâ.
The Vision charts a new policy course away from the Farm to Fork policy, the agrifood part of the EU Green Deal which helped shape policy over the past mandate. It places a stronger emphasis on economic sustainability rather than environmental, as well as a core focus on resilience, security, simplification and competitiveness.
Plans for the EUâs farming subsidy programme can be described as evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. It may stop short of getting rid of area-based payments altogether, but it does set out plans to redirect EU farming subsidies towards farmers that âneed it mostâ, with particular focus on young farmers and smaller family farms. Meanwhile, the general focus has switched from stick to carrot, meaning we can expect the next CAP to be incentives-based rather than prescriptive, and from green to lean. This means streamlining the EUâs farming subsidy programme, with a new bureaucracy simplification package promised in the coming months in efforts to cut red tape.
The Vision has a strong focus on generational renewal, with a new strategy promised to explore ways to encourage young farmers to enter into the profession, and on strengthening the economic viability of farming. This includes plans to ensure that farmers are not forced to sell below production costs, doubling down on previous promises to review the EUâs unfair trading practices directive. It also leans heavily on complementary income sources for farmers, including solar, biogas, carbon farming and the development of .
This will be combined with efforts to âleverage and de-risk private capitalâ, promising to work closely with âinstitutional investorsâ such as the EIB as well as the banking sector. However, it failed to address rumours that the CAP budget will be merged with other funds into one big money pot, hinting only that there should be more âsynergiesâ between funds.
On pesticides, the agriculture Commissioner made it clear that he will not put its back on the table. Instead, the focus will be on accelerating market access for alternatives, such as biopesticides.
The Vision also envisages a tougher trade stance, such as a stronger alignment of production standards applied to imported products, notably on pesticides and animal welfare. This includes, for example, not allowing the .
Overall, the Vision is shorter sighted on the âfoodâ side of the food chain than on âfarmingâ, something that stakeholders were quick to criticise (see below for more reactions). A few standout ideas include a new proposal on and on origin labelling. Front-of-pack nutritional labelling plans set out in the Farm to Fork , while there is nothing concrete on tightening advertising standards.
How did stakeholders react?
The Vision has been met with mixed reactions, with most agreeing that the new blueprint was nothing visionary.
For EU farmersâ association Copa-Cogeca, the Vision is a âpragmatic resetâ which speaks a âdifferentâ language. However, it criticised its failure to address what it called the âelephant in the roomâ; the need for a robust future CAP budget and adequate resources to finance this package of measures. Likewise, EU young farmersâ association CEJA generally as a âconstructive approachâ, but criticised its lack of specificity. On the other hand, small farmers association European Coordination Via Campesina that the Vision was full of âdeep contractionsâ and not ambitious enough to rise to the challenges faced by the sector.
Green groups were quick to denounce the Vision for its shortsightedness. For example, Birdlife Europe that it âlargely maintains the status quo,â maintaining that it âfails to propose concrete policy actions to tackle the ongoing climate, biodiversity, and social crisesâ. Likewise, the European Environmental Bureau said the announced plans and fall âwell shortâ of the bold measures agreed in the strategic dialogue, of which both NGOs were participants.
Meanwhile, industry group FoodDrinkEurope, representing the European food and drink industry, said the roadmap ââ â namely, that it remains âoverwhelmingly focused on farming, offering little in the way of concrete measures to support Europeâs food and drink enterprisesâ. Likewise, the European Consumer Organisation BEUC said the Vision was a to bring the EU closer to consumers.
What does this mean for the future of agricultural policy?
The first thing to note is that this Vision officially closes the Farm to Fork chapter for the agrifood sector. Asked during a press conference at the launch of the Vision whether this sounds the death knell for the green policy, the EUâs agriculture Commissioner said that the way of working has âclearly changed towards those reductions that are neededâ, stressing the need to âdepolariseâ the debate. Translation: agrifood policy is in newer, but not necessarily greener, pastures.
Alongside the publication of the Vision, the Commission is turning the strategic dialogue group into a permanent advisory body called the . The board is charged with providing high-level advice to the Commission on work following the report and helping to develop the Vision.
The hope is to among the actors of the food supply chain and civil society, as well as with the Commission. The EBAF has already had its first meeting, and will continue to regularly meet over the course of this next 5-year political cycle.
The way that the Commission enacts this new policy blueprint will have far-reaching consequences for the future of the sector. Not only could decisions impact how farmers view the EU, they could also affect whether the bloc meets its environmental targets and test the tentative trust the Commission has tried so hard to cultivate with the agrifood community, particularly in the aftermath of the .
Going forward, the Vision will be a litmus test for the success of the strategic dialogue and whether that is a policy tool that can be leveraged elsewhere in the Commission. The Commission has already announced , signalling that this could be an important tool for policy making in the future, and that means it is worth paying attention to the way this process unfolds.
