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Article: Can the EU meet its new 25% organic target?
07 July 2020
This is article is from our policy coverage dated
070720.
Data and political trends suggest that the EU faces an uphill
battle to achieve its new ambition of making a quarter of its
farmland organic by 2030.
On 20 May 2020, the European Commission released its
long-awaited Farm to Fork Strategy (F2F) as part of the European
Green Deal - its plan to make the EU climate-neutral by 2050. The
overall aim of the strategy is to drive more sustainable food
consumption and production in the EU through 27 measures and four
aspirational targets.
One of these four F2F targets is to have "at least 25% of the
EU's agricultural land under organic farming by 2030". This
objective is also mentioned in the EU's Biodiversity Strategy for
2030, another key component of the Green Deal.
According to Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski,
reaching this organic target will be instrumental in helping member
states achieve the other F2F goals of reducing the use of
pesticides, antibiotics and fertilizers.
With so much political weight put on the Commission's 25%
organic ambition, it begs the question if it is actually
realistic.
Cart before the horse?
The overall share of organic farmland in the EU currently stands
at just 8%, according to the European Commission.
Wolfgang Burtscher, the EU executive's newly appointed Director
General for agriculture and rural development, acknowledged at the
online European Organic Congress on July 2 that reaching the 25%
target will be "challenging. He said it will require a "strong
commitment" by member states in the design and implementation of
their Strategic Plans, in which they will need to lay out how they
intend to achieve the EU-wide objectives of the Common Agricultural
Policy (CAP) .
The official revealed that the Commission hopes to realise the
needed growth in organic farmland by "trying to bring those
countries with low shares up".
According to the latest Eurostat data for 2018, the smallest
proportions of organic area in the EU are found in Malta (0.4%),
Romania (2.4%), Bulgaria and Ireland (both 2.6%).
Such low shares are even more common than higher ones, given
that just eight member states had a share of at least 10% of
organic land and are now at around half of the EU target, including
Slovenia (10%), Finland (13.1%), Latvia (14.5%), Czechia (14.8%)
and Italy (15.2%).
Austria topped the ranks with 23.4% and is the only country
already close to reaching the new 2030 mark, followed by Sweden
(20.3%) and Estonia (20.6%).
The Commission has therefore highlighted Austria as an example
of how the objective is achievable.
But Norbert Lins, the chair of the European Parliament's
Agriculture Committee, pointed out at the European Organic Congress
that the country's organic market is imbalanced and based on
trade.
"The organic retail sector [in Austria] is only 9%, they are
dependent on exports to countries such as Germany and Switzerland,
especially for crops and milk," the MEP said.
In response, Burtscher said that market demand will be a "key
driver of change" to boost organic agriculture and argued that it
is "essential" that demand and production "grow in tandem to
maintain the sector in a solid equilibrium".
Current growth rate insufficient
Still, previous EU growth trends for organic production suggest
that the F2F's ambition will be difficult to achieve by the end of
the decade.
The latest Eurostat figures show that the bloc's organic farming
area rose by more a third between 2012 and 2018 (+37%) - from 9.5
million hectares (5.9% of total farmland) to nearly 13 million
hectares (8%). This upward trend was driven by an increase in all
member states except Poland.
While this is a remarkable increase and arguably a success
story, IHS market calculations indicate that a much more rapid
expansion will be needed in the coming years.
Within the 2012-2018 period, the annual growth rate amounted to
5.3% on average. At this pace, the share of organic farmland in the
EU would reach just 15.6% by the end of the decade (see graph
below).
If we take a shorter timeframe, we can see that this growth rate
accelerated in the last two recorded years - from 2017 to 2018 - to
6.95%. Assuming that this annual increase continues for twelve
years, 19.2% of EU agricultural area would be organic by 2030 -
still more than 5% short of the F2F ambition.
Much higher growth will thus be needed to achieve the 25% target
by 2030, namely of close to 10% each year.
This appears to be a momentous challenge for the European
agricultural sector, especially when taking some specificities of
the data into consideration.
First of all, the Eurostat figures include both certified
organic area and so-called "area under conversion" - land
undergoing a conversion process of two to three years (depending on
the crop) before it can be certified as organic. This means that
large parts of the area that will be counted as organic may not yet
be so in practice.
Another important sidenote is that it is arguably easier to have
a high percentage-growth from a lower starting number than from a
higher number.
Commission's strategy
The Commission has indicated that the next CAP will be its most
important tool to realise the organic transition, most notably
through measures such as the new eco-schemes, investment support
and advisory services to farmers.
The EU executive has also promised to come up with a specific
'action plan' on organic farming to "help member states stimulate
both supply and demand for organic products". The plan is expected
to be released in November this year, after a public consultation,
and will cover aspects such as support for land conversion, supply
chain development, and research and innovation.
In the F2F Communication, the Commission added that it seeks to
drive organic demand by using EU promotion schemes and public
procurement, through purchasing channels such as school and
hospitals.
The update to the EU's organic rules, coming into force in 2021,
will also help by ensuring trust in its organic labels, it
argued.
Welcomed by organic stakeholders
The Commission's organic plans met with mixed reactions from the
agri-food industry and policymakers.
For IFOAM EU, the organic farming and food association in
Brussels, the new 25% target came as a surprise, since the lobby
had asked the Commission to aim for just 20% of EU farmland organic
by 2030.
But the group still welcomed the high ambition and the
accompanying measures to boost supply and demand for organics.
IFOAM EU President Jan Plagge called the new EU target a "landmark
decision" that puts organic farming "at the core of a transition of
European agriculture towards agroecology".
At the same time, Plagge warned that this ambition will only be
achievable if it is "fully taken into account in the negotiations
on the ongoing CAP reform". The organic movement therefore called
on the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission to
integrate the objectives into the CAP's Strategic Plans Regulation
so that the policy becomes an "effective tool" to incentivise this
transition.
However, the Commission has made it clear that it will not
change its reform proposals and instead rely on member states'
implementation of their Strategic Plans to achieve its new green
ambitions.
To justify this decision, the EU executive has referred to a
recent analysis which concluded that its CAP reform blueprint is
fully compatible with the Green Deal, on the condition that the key
provisions of the proposal are maintained and certain improvements
are developed. But in practice, this seems unlikely to happen, as
agriculture ministers in the Council have been constantly trying to
weaken environmental requirements for the future CAP.
Moreover, because there is still no political agreement on this
CAP reform yet, the European Parliament and Council have now agreed
to a two-year transition period for the farming policy from 2020
onwards, meaning the next CAP is now only set to start in 2023.
That means the new policy will have relatively limited time to help
speed up the needed organic transition, potentially just seven
years, since the next is also likely to run from 2023 to 2030 - the
end date for the F2F targets.
Criticism and doubts
The EU's main farming association Copa-Cogeca has been more
critical of the F2F organic target. Pekka Pesonen, the union's
Secretary-General, said they supported the strategy's direction "in
principle" because organic producers generally earn more, but he
called the 25% target "overly-ambitious" and claimed it could
"kill" the sector if supply outstrips demand.
Members of the European Parliament raised similar concerns
regarding the demand-side, saying farming subsidies will not be
enough to bring organic prices down for consumers.
Meanwhile, member states in the Council have criticised the EU
executive's ambiguity over how the efforts to achieve these targets
will be divided, namely whether there will only be an overarching
EU-wide target or a more tailored objective set out for each EU
country.
At the European Organic Congress, IFOAM's Jan Plagge said that
member states will need to introduce national targets for organic
land in their future CAP strategic plans.
The Commission's Wolfgang Burtscher also attempted to reassure
participants by stating that they will take the diverging
situations in the different EU countries into account.
But Walter Dübner from the Agriculture Ministry of Germany,
which now holds the Council Presidency, noted that some member
states are very reluctant to have such fixed organic goals.
Lins echoed this remark, stating: "There are member states which
are more ambitious and member states which are less ambitious… It
will be very difficult to impose targets on all countries".
Such goals could also be difficult to enforce, given that the
25% mark is not enshrined in EU law and the Commission seems
reluctant to sanction member states when they fail to achieve the
goals under their future Strategic Plans, saying it prefers to
solve shortfalls through "constructive dialogue" instead.
Uneven organic ambition between the member states, alongside
uncertain growth rates, thus paints an uncertain future. National
governments will need to strongly incentivise a switch to organic
under their next CAP Strategic Plans and help galvanise a shift in
consumer behaviour, otherwise it seems rather unlikely that the new
F2F target will become reality on our farming fields.