Q&A: What will be on the menu for the EU’s Vision for Agriculture and Food?
What is the upcoming Vision for Agriculture and Food proposed by the EU?
The EU’s upcoming Vision for Agriculture and Food can be seen as a blueprint that lays the groundwork for the direction of European agricultural and food policy over the next five years and beyond. Christophe Hansen, recently appointed as the agriculture commissioner, has described the Vision as a “shared roadmap for future initiatives”.
A brainchild of Commission president von der Leyen, the new roadmap will be built on the recommendations of the Strategic Dialogue on the Future of Agriculture, a multistakeholder forum launched in January 2024 (See the question below for more details on the dialogue).
As set out in commissioner Hansen’s mission letter, the Vision is to be presented within the first 100 days of the new administration's time in office and should focus on “ensur[ing] the long-term competitiveness and sustainability of our farming and food sector within the boundaries of our planet.”
How is the Vision relevant?
First and foremost, the Vision will guide all future thinking on agrifood policy. It will essentially replace the Farm to Fork strategy – the previous administration’s flagship agrifood policy and part of the Green Deal policy package – in helping to reconcile green goals with the economic realities of farming.
The Vision will play a key role in dictating how the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the EU’s farming subsidy programme, looks after the current iteration runs out in 2027. Worth a third of the EU budget, the CAP is renegotiated every 7 years, with talks opening years ahead of the deadline. In the summer, the Commission is due to present a proposal for how the CAP might look in the future.
With a 2030 deadline looming for many of the EU’s green targets, the next five years will decide whether the EU will achieve the targets set out in its Green Deal policy programme. The European agricultural sector is responsible for 12 percent of the EU's total greenhouse gas emissions and also a key driver of biodiversity loss, so getting farmers on board is vital if the EU wants to stand a chance of achieving its green goals.
However, that is easier said than done. EU farmers are still reeling from the double whammy of the COVID pandemic followed immediately by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, leaving them squeezed between rising costs and falling prices. Farmers are becoming more frustrated with what they describe as the EU’s escalating environmental requirements and bureaucratic burden, coupled with concerns over their weak bargaining position in the food supply chain.
These escalating tensions drove EU farmers to the streets in protest at the beginning of 2024, and while tensions have calmed for now, they are still simmering close to the surface. Against this backdrop, the Vision is a key part of ongoing efforts to temper increasing polarisation in the agrifood sector by offering farmers a clear path forward.
How did the Vision come about?
The European Commission announced in September 2023 that it would launch a strategic dialogue on the future of agriculture. The dialogue group consisted of 29 agrifood stakeholders from all sides of the supply chain, including farmers’ groups, civil society and industry.
The idea was to get stakeholders in the agricultural supply chain – everyone from producers and processors, through to NGOs and industry – around one table to find compromises in an effort to foster “more dialogue and less polarisation” in the sector.
The dialogue centred around several core questions, chief among them how to guarantee a fair standard of living for farmers while also ensuring the sector fits within planetary boundaries. The group examined ways to maximise the potential of technological innovations, ways to lighten the bureaucratic load on farmers and ways to make the sector more competitive. The latter two points will be defining themes of the new Commission over the next five years.
The dialogue was guided by an independent chair, German researcher Peter Strohschneider, and conducted in secret to encourage open discussion. The group met regularly over a period of seven months to discuss their differences and write a shared report on the future prospects of the sector.
Political pressure mounted on the talks as they fell squarely in the middle of the farmers’ protests in January 2024, further adding to the challenge.
Against the odds, the group published their joint report in September and presented an assessment of the challenges and opportunities facing the sector, as well as a set of policy recommendations. These recommendations are set to form the basis of the upcoming Vision.
What do we already know about the contents of the Vision?
While the Vision is not exactly a policy paper, the roadmap is expected to outline future legislative proposals and policy plans, meaning it falls somewhat in a grey area.
Although the Commission is not obliged to act on the suggestions from the strategic dialogue, president von der Leyen created it to provide herself with ideas on how to move forward. That means the chances are high that at least a strategic number of the recommendations will be acted upon.
One of the most prominent suggestions from the strategic dialogue – and one that garnered the most media attention – was an overhaul of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy subsidies, shifting away from area-based payments and instead tying payments to economic viability. This would be a big move for what has been a historically conservative policy.
On the ‘farm’ side of the chain, the dialogue group is calling for the creation of a European Observatory of Agricultural Land and a harmonised benchmarking system for sustainability. The report advocates for the creation of two new funds: one dedicated to the just transition of the agricultural sector and another focused on nature restoration. However, increasing pressure on the EU budget may well hinder the chances of such funds materialising.
The ‘fork’ side recommends a rethink of public procurement policies and more support for plant-based options.
What is worth keeping an eye on is how the Vision handles areas where the dialogue group diverges from the ambitions of the Commission. This includes the possible creation of an agricultural emissions trading scheme, favoured as a policy option by the Commission but not supported by the dialogue group. Another is the recommendation to strengthen mirror measures in trade agreements. President von der Leyen’s first move in office was to set the ball in motion for the signing of the Mercosur trade agreement, something agrifood stakeholders almost unanimously oppose.
When will the EU present the Vision?
The Vision should be presented within the first 100 days of the Commission’s time in government, and although there has not been an official date set yet, 19 February is currently pencilled in – a date which fits within the 100-day promise.
What does this mean for the future of agricultural policy?
Alongside the publication of the Vision, the Commission is turning the strategic dialogue group into a permanent advisory body called the European Board on Agriculture and Food (EBAF). The board is charged with providing high-level advice to the Commission on work following the report and helping to develop the Vision.
The hope is to sustain a “new culture of dialogue, trust and multi-stakeholder participation” among the actors of the food supply chain and civil society, as well as with the Commission. The Commission is currently in the process of choosing which stakeholders will have a seat on this board, which will be finalised in the coming weeks.
Making a mistake with the Vision early on could have far-reaching consequences. Not only could decisions impact how farmers view the EU, they could also affect whether the bloc meets its environmental targets and test the tentative trust the Commission has tried so hard to cultivate with the agrifood community, particularly in the aftermath of the Mercosur trade deal.
Going forward, the Vision will be a litmus test for the success of the strategic dialogue and whether that is a policy tool that can be leveraged elsewhere in the Commission. The Commission has already announced similar dialogues in other sectors, signalling that this could be an important tool for policy making in the future, and that means it is worth paying attention to the way this process unfolds.
