The Commission published on 19 February a Communication on A Vision for Agriculture and Food. This roadmap on the future of farming and food in the EU was built on the report of the Strategic Dialogue on the Future of EU Agriculture and in consultation with the European Board for Agriculture and Food (EBAF).
With four priority areas – an attractive sector; a competitive and resilient sector; a future-proof sector; and fair living and working conditions in rural areas – the Vision is designed to secure the long-term competitiveness and sustainability of the EU’s farming and food sector. However, the Commission will not present new proposals but will focus mainly on better implementation of existing legislation and on incentive measures.
Bioeconomy and circularity are seen as having great potential to offer for agriculture and the Commission wants to accelerate the commercialisation of bio-based and circular solutions. It recognises that the EU’s food sovereignty depends on imported inputs such as fertilisers, and considers the support for the uptake and efficient use of low-carbon fertilisers and recycled nutrients, such as digestate, as a way of reducing such dependence. During an exchange of views with MEPs from the AGRI Committee, the Commissioner for Agriculture and Food Christophe Hansen highlighted the importance of the fertiliser strategy, including with regard to organic fertiliser to make better use of manure, with fewer nutrients loss. In addition, the Commission wants to pay special attention to improving nutrients management at farm level and increasing nutrients circularity which can help reduce the use of synthetic fertilisers. For this, they will use the evidence provided by the upcoming evaluation of the Nitrates Directive. Regarding carbon farming, the Commission considers it represents an additional source of income for farmers and welcomes the harmonisation introduced by the CRCF certification framework. However, the Commission stresses the important fragmentation of the existing sustainability standards and certifications. To address this issue, the Commission proposes to develop voluntary benchmarking system for on-farm sustainability assessments (e.g., on-farm sustainability compass that would allow farmers to monitor and record sustainability data only once). As for the CAP, the Commission wants to simplify the current system of conditionality and orient the future CAP away from conditions to incentives. Finally, the Commission insists on the need to reduce and recover food loss and food waste to increase the sustainability of the EU food system.