Europe’s New Sustainable Agricultural Policies Will Make Foods Even More Expensive, Farmers Warn

Farmers and agri­cul­tural coop­er­a­tives are wor­ried about the unin­tended con­se­quences of the European Union’s plans for a more sus­tain­able food pro­duc­tion sys­tem.

The pro­pos­als are in line with the 27-mem­ber bloc’s Green Deal, which seeks to improve the health and well­be­ing of cit­i­zens by pro­vid­ing healthy and afford­able food while caus­ing min­i­mal envi­ron­men­tal impact.

In addi­tion, to fight against cli­mate change, the E.U. seeks to reduce green­house emis­sions by about 55 per­cent by 2030 and achieve net-zero car­bon emis­sions by 20250.

According to their sup­port­ers, the E.U.’s Common Agricultural Policy and Farm to Fork strat­egy are designed to help the bloc meet these goals by the end of the decade.

Among their key ten­ants are increas­ing the amount of land ded­i­cated to organic pro­duc­tion, reduc­ing the use of petro­chem­i­cal-based fer­til­iz­ers by 20 per­cent and min­i­miz­ing antibi­otics in ani­mal rear­ing by 50 per­cent.

However, farm­ers and agri­cul­tural orga­ni­za­tions feel short­changed by these pro­pos­als, which crit­ics argue are adding pro­duc­tion costs to a busi­ness that already oper­ates on thin mar­gins.

According to Ignacio López, the direc­tor of inter­na­tional rela­tions at the Association of Young Farmers and Ranchers (Asaja, by its Spanish ini­tials), coop­er­a­tives have adopted the ​‘wait and see’ posi­tion.

However, he added that if these pro­pos­als become bind­ing, they will likely have a ​“not very encour­ag­ing” impact on the agri­cul­tural sec­tor.

López pre­dicts that the cost of food pro­duc­tion will go up, and con­sumers will have to dig deeper into their pock­ets to buy food.

He added that there is the risk of local farm­ers fac­ing unfair com­pe­ti­tion from coun­tries out­side the region where these require­ments do not exist and E.U. states, in turn, becom­ing depen­dent on imports.

In the lat­est iter­a­tion of the CAP, which was recently approved by the European Parliament for the period 2023 to 2027, the E.U. sought to make the agri­cul­tural sec­tor more sus­tain­able, health­ier and envi­ron­men­tally friendly.

However, López said that these require­ments call for dig­i­tal­iza­tion and cut­ting-edge tech­nolo­gies, such as sen­sors and drones, to make pre­ci­sion agri­cul­ture a real­ity and effi­ciently use nat­ural resources.

This means E.U. mem­bers, such as Spain, will have to allo­cate more money to develop the capac­ity to com­pete in inter­na­tional mar­kets.

Andoni García, a mem­ber of the Coordinator of Agriculture and Livestock Organizations (COAG) exec­u­tive, a farm­ers’ union, said mem­ber states must make many changes to achieve the E.U.’s lat­est set of goals. These include a new price pol­icy and finan­cial sup­port to pro­duc­ers to reflect the cost of pro­duc­tion and guard against out­sourc­ing.

“As the CAP has been designed, the mar­ket instru­ments are insuf­fi­cient, and the farmer who lives from the agri­cul­tural activ­ity will not be pri­or­i­tized in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of aid,” García said.

• Valencia Fruits
• EFE Agro