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This article is taken from our IEG Policy platform dated
12/05/20.
Stella Kyriakides, the European Commissioner for Health and Food
Safety, defended the EU executive's new sustainable food policy
against several MEPs who think it risks undermining production.
Several members of the European Parliament's Agriculture
Committee (AGRI) have said the Farm to Fork (F2F) strategy risks
policies piling up on farmers in a way that will hit their
productivity. At an AGRI meeting yesterday (May 11), they demanded
'realistic' proposals with incentives rather than new
requirements.
Commissioner Kyriakides, who will lead the F2F strategy, told
AGRI MEPs that the EU executive is "not going to trade off food
sustainability for food security" and that any legally binding
target would be preceded by an impact assessment.
"Without prospering farmers, we will not ensure food security.
And without a healthy planet, farmers will have nowhere to farm,"
the Cypriot argued.
Leaks of the F2F strategy suggest there will be targets to
reduce the use of harmful pesticides and antimicrobials as well as
measures to promote more sustainable fertilisers and increase
organic production. There could also be a series of proposals to
shift the public towards more sustainable consumption.
Kyriakides said these combined measures will be designed to
allow farmers to continue to feed Europe, but warned some MEPs that
change is still coming, because a food system that "is only
product-oriented is not enough" to address the climate and
biodiversity crisis.
Last week, (May 7), Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans
also told agriculture MEPs that the EU executive will adopt the
Farm to Fork (F2F) strategy on May 20 to encourage a more
sustainable recovery from COVID-19.
Some MEPs are still worried that the F2F strategy's ambitions
will impact farmers' ability to produce food and ultimately reduce
their incomes. Renew Europe's coordinator Ulrike Müller said
farmers are already struggling to keep their operations running and
stricter policies would make it harder to grow food and push them
closer to bankruptcy.
"We need farmers and we need families that can earn money," she
said, singling out the risk that ill-prepared pesticide policies
could have on their productivity.
EPP's Herbert Dorfmann, who had led calls to delay the
publication of the F2F strategy, argued that while the EU must
think about sustainable production, the Commission "cannot decouple
that from an economic discussion" or they risk driving down incomes
and increasing food prices across Europe.
But Green MEP Martin Häusling criticised his colleagues for
using food security arguments to weaken the F2F strategy's
environmental ambition. He said Europe is currently producing and
consuming too much food, which is evident with the amount the bloc
wastes.
Kyriakides was also not deterred by the MEPs' food security
fears, saying that the F2F strategy "is not here to penalise or
punish, it is here to help us move towards more sustainable food
systems", adding that the Commission will make use of all available
policy tools to support farmers in the sustainable transition.
She told AGRI MEPs that the key instrument to support farmers in
achieving the F2F strategy's objectives will be the next Common
Agricultural Policy (CAP). This was a reference to the proposed CAP
Strategic Plans, which are the Commission's blueprint for national
governments to meet different objectives set at an EU level and
will need to be approved by the EU executive beforehand.
"It is very important for us to have F2F before the [next] CAP
is adopted so we can influence it," Kyriakides said.
