Last week, the European Commission published its long-awaited Farm to Fork Strategy. Will sustainability be the key pillar of its food policy? Stéphanie Brochard provides answers and expands a bit more on the key elements of this strategy.
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Last week, the European Commission published its long-awaited Farm to Fork Strategy. At the heart of the European Green Deal, this strategy marks a “paradigm shift”, moving the focus from food production and agriculture to food systems. The objective is very clear: the EU will make sustainability a key pillar of its food policy and will set a global standard for sustainable food supply chains.
The Farm to Fork strategy lists 27 actions covering food production, processing, retailing and waste and is articulated around four main elements.
First, it puts consumers at the centre and underlines the role of consumer demand in driving change. From a proposal for a front-of-pack nutrition labelling to the creation of a sustainable labelling framework that covers nutritional, climate, environmental and social aspects of food products, proposed actions from the Commission aim to enable consumers to make health-and-sustainability-conscious choices.
Second regarding food production, the new Common Agricultural Policy will be a crucial tool to deliver a more sustainable agriculture. The Commission set multiple targets, for example to reduce the use of chemical pesticides and fertilisers and announced the revision of several pieces of legislation on pesticides, feed additives and animal welfare.
Thirdly, the Strategy looks at industry behaviour and seeks concrete commitments from companies on health and sustainability. The Commission will develop an EU Code of conduct for responsible business and marketing practices and require the food industry to integrate sustainability into corporate strategies.
Finally, the Farm to Fork Strategy recognises the impossibility for the EU to succeed alone. EU trade policy should contribute to obtain ambitious commitments from third countries on animal welfare, the use of pesticides and the fight against antimicrobial resistance. This also raises the question of shorter supply chains, where a fine line will have to be found to increase the resilience of European food systems without turning to protectionism.
The Farm to Fork Strategy comes at a time when the agri-food sector has been severely impacted by the Covid-19 crisis which put Europe’s food security to the test and threatens the livelihood of many farmers. Most actions under the strategy are not expected before 2022, giving the EU time to find the right balance to transform its food system while leaving no one behind.
