Ten years ago (oh, how time flies!) I wrote an article about the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the EU for this blog. To be honest, back then, it was more of a thing I considered as an obligation to the overall EU discussions we aim to invoke through EU360. During my studies, the CAP was one of those policies an EU expert should know well, but it was never one of those “sexy” policies that make headlines more than a couple of times a year, when large tractors roll into Brussels, causing chaos, and recently, destruction. Little did I know that a decade later I would have come out of a project that would make me immerse myself into everything CAP… and wider.
The imperative to change
There’s much talk about climate change, and how we will have to adapt our lifestyles to more extreme and unpredictable weather phenomenons. Wildfires and floods are making news in Europe for the past couple of years, both also in Slovenia. Much is being said about the people who lose property (thankfully not lives), heroic rescue teams, and government support to rebuild. But very little is being said about how this impacts our food.
Europeans tend to forget that what we eat has to be grown somewhere. And that farming is the one industry that relies heavily on weather patterns. When harvest season begins, all hands are on deck. If the weather changes, everything from sowing to operations that happen next is harder to predict. Yields vary based on weather, and while our globalised world makes sure we don’t go hungry in Europe, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee a constant income for our farmers.
The good news is that we know which agricultural practices are speeding up climate change – from monocultures, to the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilisers, as well as extensive livestock production. And we also have new sustainable farming techniques, and technologies that help farmers predict and manage fluctuations in conditions based on a variety of data that they can collect with the modern technology.
But changing the way we produce food is just a part of the solution to mitigate the impact of agriculture in climate change, and bring forth a more sustainable way of living in general.
Think bigger. Think food systems
Through research, and a lot of discussions with people who’ve been dealing with CAP in Slovenia and internationally, I’ve come to realise that the wider community dealing with this old lady of an EU policy understand it has to change. But I also found out that this policy change would have to be so radical that it seems almost impossible in the current institutional setup.
What became clear to me though is that a pure CAP reform, where the policy would have been taken completely apart and then put back together again probably doesn’t have to occur at all once we view the issue of food through a larger prism. The food system.
What we have to do is look at the entire system – from how we produce food, to storage, processing, retail, consumption and (yes, even that!) food waste. Add transportation and you get a fully fledged overview of the problem. Just looking at GHGs and air pollutants from the food systems is enough to understand this (EC data).
We are harming our planet way more than we think just by how we produce and consume food. And everything in between.
And all of those elements are connected. Touch one and you get a domino effect on the rest.
The puzzle
If the realisation that what ends up as a decision on my plate can contribute to my kids having a harder time finding quality food later in their lives made me sad and concerned, what I discovered later brought back hope.
After a couple of rounds in Brussels, having spoken with people in key positions within the institutions and those from the wider agri-food community, what became apparent is that a couple of dialogues are taking place in parallel. In addition to the official Strategic dialogue, there are other unofficial groups, like the Forum for the Future of Agriculture, where discussions are held with a different kind of ease.
One thing that stands out to an observer is that there seems to be little to no dialogue between the two extremes – large farmers of Europe and radical environmentalists.
Nevertheless, even in the couple of months that it took me to gather all observations and create an overview of what’s being talked about in Brussels, it became clear that the narrative is shifting and a consensus seems to be growing with the majority of actors in the middle – from industry, to researchers, and NGOs – that some kind of a deal will have to be made so that a transition to a more sustainable food system is sped up by EU regulation. The recent stakeholder event on Incentivising climate action for a sustainable and competitive agri-food value chain, organised by the EC in June 2024, shows the cross-sectoral approach to agri-food systems regulation.
The outlines of the final puzzle are clear – a new legislative framework supporting the entire agri-food sector in their transition to more sustainable practices at every step. What remains unclear is how the pieces will look like. Will some be larger than others, would they be more or less complicated to put together? Would some stakeholders quit the game, and other feel left out or forgotten? How big of a role will the CAP and its funding play in all of this and can it distort the final image?
Time will tell. But for now, the impression is that the first seeds have already been sown in Brussels, and the puzzle is starting to be put together – through small changes to existing regulations, new legislative proposals that would be coming, and discussions of larger policy change.
And so now is the time to be patient and proactive in working together, talking and exchanging information to create the best possible framework for a new EU agri-food system of the future.
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