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Following months of renewed farmers’ protests throughout Europe, the EU unveiled its extremely anticipated ‘Vision for Agriculture and Food‘ on 19 February. According to its main architect, European Commissioner for Agriculture, Christophe Hansen, this daring new technique goals to “give again hope” to Europe’s getting old and financially-beleaguered farming sector, with its producers reeling from “dramatic local weather occasions,” weak “costs for his or her merchandise and… political stress.”
Hansen has got down to strike a brand new compact with EU farmers, projecting a “farmer-friendly” picture in Brussels, emphasising trust-building and dealing with, relatively than towards farmers, as was largely the case within the earlier Commission’s now-discarded ‘Farm to Fork’ (F2F) agenda. Encouragingly, the EU govt has signaled its intention to desert needlessly burdensome rules exacerbating producers’ struggles in favour of tangible assist to assist foster a aggressive and sustainable meals system – a serious step in the precise route for EU agri-food coverage.
Unpacking Brussels’s change in fact
Brussels’s new ‘Vision for Agriculture and Food’ is full of formidable pledges, from slicing crimson tape for farmers and rebalancing the meals provide chain to curbing unfair commerce practices and swapping punitive inexperienced guidelines for incentive-driven options. In pushing for fairer commerce, the EU is eyeing stricter import guidelines to forestall hazardous pesticides banned within the EU from re-entering by way of overseas items, thus leveling the enjoying subject for European producers. On the home entrance, long-overdue reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) search to redirect subsidies away from massive landowners towards small farms, younger farmers and people in environmentally-sensitive areas. Simplifying forms is equally a precedence for making EU funding extra accessible to the farmers who want it most.
Although environmental ambitions stay – regardless of the inaccurate claims of sure NGOs and MEPs – the strategy has shifted. Farmers, the Commission argues, should be handled as companions in decarbonisation, not culprits, whereas meals corporations and retailers might be rightly anticipated to share the environmental burden. Green incentives will change penalties, with the EU govt in the end realising that the top-down, “one-size-fits-all” strategy embodied by the F2F technique is solely ineffective.
This imaginative and prescient marks a decisive departure from the controversial F2F agenda – which Commissioner Hansen has explicitly disavowed – notorious for setting bureaucratic, out-of-touch targets, like halving pesticide use by 2030, with out providing lifelike pathways. Commissioner Hansen stresses that the brand new strategy strives to realize essential reductions “another way,” providing “sensible options” that avoid Farm to Fork’s deeply polarising legacy.
Pesticides regulation, controversial Nutri-Score off the desk
In a hanging reversal, the EU has formally scrapped probably the most formidable—and controversial—F2F part: the overhaul of the EU pesticide regulations. The Sustainable Use of Pesticides Regulation (SUR), first proposed in June 2022, was withdrawn in February 2024 amid fierce farmer protests and mounting right-wing opposition to the European Green Deal. “There is not any intention to do something particular on sustainable pesticides right here,” an EU official has bluntly acknowledged, underscoring the coverage’s political toxicity.
Equally notable is the quiet abandonment of the EU’s contentious obligatory front-of-pack diet label, together with France’s Nutri-Score candidate. Making no point out of the label, the brand new agri-food imaginative and prescient as an alternative prioritises product origin and animal welfare labelling, with the Commission properly emphasising that customers want “reliable data” amid the current proliferation of unreliable meals bundle labels like Nutri-Score.
In current years, Nutri-Score has develop into a logo of Farm to Fork’s flaws: arbitrary, deceptive, imposed with out satisfactory session and dangerous to small producers. Among F2F’s most polarising insurance policies, Nutri-Score has generated widespread opposition from EU farmers and governments corresponding to Portugal, Greece, Czechia and Poland, with the system’s slanted algorithm slapping the standard PDO merchandise – like cured meats, cheeses and different regional stapes that Hansen now intends to guard with product origin labelling – with unfairly unfavorable rankings, deceptive shoppers and jeopardising farmers’ livelihoods.
Delivering on the bottom
By taking the sustainable pesticides regulation and diet label off the desk, the EU govt has supplied the bloc’s farmers a right away win and a basis for additional progress to make life simpler for the trade. Looking forward, Hansen describes the EU’s new agri-food imaginative and prescient as a 15-year roadmap designed to revive stability to a sector stricken by unpredictability. His message is straightforward: with out certainty, there’s no funding—and Europe’s farmers desperately want each.
More funding in home agritech goals to make sure Europe’s farmers can compete globally with out sacrificing sustainability. Indeed, future-proofing European agriculture means embracing progressive options and offering farmers the funding and technical assist to implement them. Brussels needs gene-edited crops and biopesticides to achieve the market sooner, with scaling up biotechnologies, boosting EU-grown plant proteins and slicing reliance on imported fertilizers equally a part of the plan.
Attracting younger individuals to the rapidly-aging farming sector can also be important, with the Commission promising higher pay, fewer bureaucratic hurdles and new income streams, from carbon farming to bioenergy and round financial system initiatives. Expected later this 12 months, a generational renewal technique will make land and financing extra accessible to younger farmers, whereas meals stockpiles are additionally into consideration to defend Europe from provide chain shocks.
The EU’s new “Vision for Agriculture and Food” provides a much-needed reset for Europe’s agri-food sector, putting belief, competitiveness and sustainability at its core. With the precise high-level technique lastly established, the true take a look at now lies in translating ambition into tangible outcomes. Farmers urgently want sensible assist to get well misplaced competitiveness whereas upholding Europe’s demanding sustainability requirements. After years of coverage missteps, that is the EU’s second to ship actual change.
