Farm to Fork Strategy Under Fire Ahead of European Elections in 2024

Ahead of European-wide elec­tions in spring 2024, politi­cians in Brussels are scram­bling to cod­ify many of the polit­i­cal pro­grams included in the European Commission’s land­mark Farm to Fork Strategy into law.

However, the after­math of the Covid-19 pan­demic, the energy cri­sis fueled by the Russian inva­sion of Ukraine and food infla­tion have embold­ened crit­ics of the strat­egy, which seeks to make farm­ing and the food indus­try more sus­tain­able.

Political infight­ing in the halls of power in Brussels has also jeop­ar­dized the strat­egy, with sig­nif­i­cant divi­sions emerg­ing around lim­its on the use of pes­ti­cides, stan­dard­ized food labels and ani­mal wel­fare.

Advocates of the Farm to Fork Strategy believe that these next six months are absolutely crit­i­cal for cod­i­fy­ing pro­posed pro­grams into leg­is­la­tion. After September 2023, many worry that politi­cians will shift their focus to the elec­tions.

To under­score the urgency of the sit­u­a­tion, a group of 286 civil soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions led by the World Wide Fund for Nature signed an open let­ter last month to Ursula von der Leyen, pres­i­dent of the European Commission, urg­ing the com­mis­sion to act.

“This com­mis­sion was very ambi­tious with the amount of leg­is­la­tion they thought they could pass,” Shefali Sharma, the direc­tor of the European office of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), a sig­na­tory of the open let­ter, told Olive Oil Times. ​“Now it’s really crunch time.”

While it is likely too late to get all the com­po­nents of the Farm to Fork Strategy cod­i­fied into law, Sharma said the sus­tain­able use of pes­ti­cide leg­is­la­tion, soil health law and sus­tain­able food sys­tem law should be given the high­est pri­or­ity.

“Many of us see the sus­tain­able food sys­tem law as an oppor­tu­nity to define what sus­tain­able food sys­tems in Europe should look like,” Sharma said. ​“We need a really ambi­tious set of rules.”

However, crit­ics of the strat­egy, includ­ing Copa-Cogeca, an influ­en­tial union of European farm­ers and agri-coop­er­a­tives, believe none of the leg­is­la­tion imple­ment­ing the Farm to Fork Strategy should be passed until the con­cerns of European farm­ers are addressed.

“Europe and the wider world have fun­da­men­tally changed since the pub­li­ca­tion of the Farm to Fork and Biodiversity Strategies in May 2020,” the union told Olive Oil Times. ​“Covid-19, the war in Ukraine, the energy cri­sis and cli­mate change are all dri­vers that need to be taken into con­sid­er­a­tion by the com­mis­sion and E.U. insti­tu­tions when dis­cussing and imple­ment­ing all the leg­isla­tive ini­tia­tives already pre­sented or to be pre­sented.”

Copa-Cogeca believes ensur­ing food secu­rity, avail­abil­ity and afford­abil­ity at a time of ris­ing food com­mod­ity prices and pro­duc­tion costs should be the European Commission’s pri­or­ity.

The union also wor­ries that the com­plete imple­men­ta­tion of the Farm to Fork Strategy in its cur­rent form would make Europe too depen­dent on imports.

“In the cur­rent polit­i­cally pre­car­i­ous sit­u­a­tion, we feel the E.U. should focus more than ever on the goal of ensur­ing food secu­rity and afford­abil­ity instead of tak­ing action at the expense of our pro­duc­tion,” Copa-Cogeca said.

Some of Copa-Cogeca’s claims are sup­ported by recent research. According to a 2021 study from HFFA Research, an agri­cul­ture con­sul­tancy, to ful­fill the var­i­ous objec­tives of the Farm to Fork Strategy, ​“agri­cul­tural pro­duc­tion would tend to con­sid­er­ably decrease until 2030.”

A sep­a­rate 2021 study, com­mis­sioned by the Grain Club, a grain pro­duc­ers’ union, and under­taken by the University of Kiel, found that European pro­duc­tion of milk, beef, cere­als and oilseeds would fall sub­stan­tially with a cor­re­spond­ing price increase.

Proponents of the Farm to Fork Strategy argue that any sus­tain­able agri­cul­tural sys­tem would require reduced meat and dairy con­sump­tion any­ways due to their out­sized impact on agri­cul­tural green­house gas emis­sions.

While there are no esti­mates on how the full imple­men­ta­tion of the Farm to Fork Strategy would impact the olive oil sec­tor, Copa Cogeca said it likely would be neg­a­tive.

“Implementing the strategy’s tar­gets to the fullest will require addi­tional efforts for European olive and olive oil pro­duc­ers and will fur­ther weaken European pro­duc­tion,” the union said.

However, Sharma, the IATP and the other 285 sig­na­to­ries of the open let­ter reject the premise that the Farm to Fork Strategy will hurt food secu­rity.

They argue that bio­di­ver­sity loss and cli­mate change remain the most sig­nif­i­cant threats to food secu­rity, and enact­ing leg­is­la­tion around the Farm to Fork Strategy is the best way to mit­i­gate these effects.

“We need to sys­tem­at­i­cally think about what food secu­rity means in the E.U.,” Sharma said. ​“It’s not about being food secure with the large amount of feed grains we have.”

“It’s about diver­si­fi­ca­tion,” she added. ​“It’s about mak­ing sure that we have enough decen­tral­ized food sys­tems within the E.U. that allow coun­tries to absorb global shocks, be they pan­demic-related shocks or war-related shocks or cli­mate-related shocks.”

Sharma believes the war in Ukraine has become a ​“straw man” for the agribusi­ness lobby to con­tinue attack­ing the Farm to Fork Strategy.

“The minute the Ukraine war started, there was already a con­certed effort by Copa-Cogeca and oth­ers to try to water down the impact that the Farm to Fork Strategy could have,” she said.

For its part, Copa-Cogeca agreed that leg­is­la­tion should be passed to define what a sus­tain­able food sys­tem looks likes.

“Copa-Cogeca believes that this frame­work can be an oppor­tu­nity as we urgently need a def­i­n­i­tion for food sus­tain­abil­ity and that to ensure a truly sus­tain­able food sys­tem,” the union said.

“E.U. farm­ers and coop­er­a­tives want to pro­duce food, make the tran­si­tion to sus­tain­able food sys­tems a suc­cess and pro­vide solu­tions in the fight against cli­mate change,” Copa-Cogeca added.

However, Sharma points out that any tran­si­tion to sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture will come with sig­nif­i­cant costs, espe­cially since cer­tain health and soci­etal costs of the cur­rent agri­cul­tural sys­tem are not fac­tored into food prices.

“Frankly, there will be costs, but the sys­tem that we have today is also quite costly. We’re just not cal­cu­lat­ing all of those costs,” she said. ​“There are envi­ron­men­tal and pub­lic health costs to the sys­tem that we have in place today that are still being paid by the pub­lic.”

“So it’s about rethink­ing how we’re pay­ing for those envi­ron­men­tal and pub­lic health prob­lems and mov­ing that money towards the tran­si­tion that we need to see,” Sharma con­cluded.