Agrifood Brief: It’s (not) a kind of magic

In the wise words of a wizarding great, Albus Dumbledore, “happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light”.

With a number of key sustainability files doing a disappearing act recently and, in doing so, sounding the death knell for the EU’s flagship food policy, the Farm to Fork strategy, it’s fair to say that this has arguably been a pretty gloomy time for agrifood stakeholders.

And it might be tough to find the light switch in moments like this – but that’s exactly what a small gathering in the German town of Marburg served as this week. 

The event saw citizens, farmers, municipalities, food councils, platforms and politicians come together to take stock of farming and food action, as well as policies in Germany, France, and the wider Europe.

The idea was to share ideas and experiences with the aim to ultimately create a blueprint for a sustainable food and farming future – the so-called ‘Marburg action plan’.

And it seems that, while things might seem to have gone dark in the corridors of Brussels, lights are switching on all over Europe in communities taking matters into their own hands. 

For example, we might not yet have the EU’s proposal on sustainable food procurement in public canteens – meant to boost sustainable farming systems, such as organic farming – but this hasn’t stopped the French community of Mouans-Sartoux from successfully serving up school meals that are 100% organic, without raising the prices.

Meanwhile, in another area of France, the commune of Plessé has decided that the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP in English, PAC in French) just isn’t cutting it, instead creating its own agricultural and food policy (known as “la politique agricole et alimentaire communale – or ‘PAAC’). 

With the price of farmland skyrocketing and 40% of local farmers set to retire in the next five years – the same issue across the EU’s greying farming sector – the municipality decided to take action to preserve its agricultural sector. 

And it worked. Out of the 25 farmers that retired this year, the commune has seen 29 new entrants into farming.

These projects might sound like magic, but they’re not. They’re examples of what can happen with the right mix of committed citizens and political will – as Harry Potter’s immortal character Dumbledore would put it, “it is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities”.

He also once said that words are our most inexhaustible source of magic, which, as a journalist, I tend to agree with. 

The challenge now is getting the words exchanged during this event, written on the Marburg action plan and here on the page you’re reading, and soon spoken in Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s strategic dialogue, to work their magic on our food system.

Natasha Foote

Subscribe to EURACTIV’s Agrifood Brief, where you’ll find the latest roundup of news covering agriculture and food from across Europe. The Agrifood Brief is brought to you by EURACTIV’s Agrifood Team – Gerardo Fortuna (@gerardofortuna), Natasha Foote (@NatashaFoote), Julia Dahm (@dahm_julia), and Maria Simon Arboleas (@msimonarboleas)

News of the week

Nature Restoration happy(ish) end

Those rooting for the EU to adopt its Nature Restoration Law breathed a sigh of relief this week when the European Parliament and Council found a political agreement on the file in the last round of so-called trilogue talks on Thursday night (9 November).

While the compromise still has to be formally adopted by both sides, the agreement comes as a conclusion to months of drama around the file, which was culminated in a highly contested parliament vote this summer.

On one side, the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) put the fight against the law at the centre of its budding elections campaign, arguing it would harm European farmers. On the other hand, left-wing parties pushed not to drop what they see as a crucial part of the Green Deal.

For this latter faction, Thursday’s agreement comes as a bittersweet victory: While Green lawmakers and environmentalists showed relief at the fact that a compromise was found at all and the proposal was not outright rejected, they lamented that parts of the proposal were watered down.

“Although the cocktail mixed for the law is drinkable, it certainly tastes bitter,” German Green Martin Häusling said in a statement.

NGT debate

Left-wing parties in the European Parliament pushed back this week against a proposal by European People’s Party (EPP) lawmaker Jessica Polfjärd to relax rules on new genomic techniques (NGTs). 

Polfjärd wanted even more liberalisation than what the Commission aimed for in its proposal on gene editing –  a number of new scientific methods used to alter genomes with the aim of genetically engineering certain traits into plants.

The most controversial tweaks proposed by the centre-right lawmaker on Tuesday (7 November) include allowing NGTs in organic farming and removing the labelling requirements for NGT-based crops that are indistinguishable from those obtained through conventional breeding.

Glyphosate showdown coming up

The vote on the re-approval of glyphosate is going into the second round next week after a first vote in October remained inconclusive.

On Thursday (16 November), national representatives are set to re-vote on the Commission’s proposal to renew the approval of the most widely used herbicide in the EU for 10 years.

Should the second-round vote produce neither a so-called qualified majority in favour nor against the proposal, the Commission is free to take the decision unilaterally.

Time, in any case, is running out: The current approval of glyphosate expires in December, so a decision will need to be made before then.

Enough is enough, says the WHO on alcohol EU policymaking

Anyone who has worked in the Brussels bubble is used to the practice of industry associations, big corporations, NGOs, and civil society organisations to lobby MEPs before an important vote at the Parliament.

This time, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has decided to address the EU lawmakers ahead of a crucial European Parliament vote, expressing increasing concern about a “scientifically inaccurate and worrisome” wording on alcohol use.

The attempt from MEPs to ‘water down’ the alcohol cancer risk by warning only against an alleged ‘harmful use’ was not well-digested and triggered the unprecedented action. EURACTIV’s agrifood editor Gerardo Fortuna put his hands on the letter, you can read more in this story

Hidden costs of food systems

Health-related costs account for most of the hidden costs of the EU agri-food system, an official of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) told Euractiv while presenting the UN agency’s latest report on the matter. 

The study, published on Monday (6 November), found that in Europe, 82% of the hidden costs are due to unhealthy diets which lead to lower labour productivity.

The FAO expects the global hidden costs in 2023 to reach $13.2 trillion – with the bulk of the increase on the health side – and acknowledges that food marketing, labelling and certification are “vital” to influence consumers’ behaviour.

Not-so-hidden costs of olive oil

Olive oil prices in the EU have continued to go through the roof this year, as new data from EU statistics agency Eurostat shows. By September this year, prices were 75% higher than in January 2021.

The spike is mostly seen as a consequence of extreme weather events in producing regions – think of the recent severe drought on the Iberian Peninsula, for instance.

In Spain, oil practically achieved luxury status when some supermarkets started putting anti-theft alarms on the bottles- the same ones they use for perfumes and liquor.

Agrifood news from the CAPitals

GERMANY

Ten farms shut down every day. Between 2010 and 2020, an average of ten farms in Germany shut down every day, according to a new government report on agriculture policy published this week. Especially in the life stock sector, the number of farms shrunk significantly. “Structural change in agriculture is being driven by two main factors: a lack of economic prospects and a lack of political reliability for future investments,” Bernhard Krüsken, general secretary of the farmers’ association, told Euractiv.

GREECE

Greece imposes heavy fines on multinationals amid public anger over rising prices. The conservative Greek government has imposed a €2 million fine on two multinational companies for unfair, excessive profit margins as public anger over rising prices for essential goods, including food, is growing. Read more.

FRANCE

‘Don’t touch my rural life’: French hunters’ representative announces EU election bid. French hunters’ representative Willy Schraen has made his candidacy for the EU elections official, heading a list that will defend the rural way of life he says is under threat from EU ‘technocrats’. Read the story.

SPAIN

Key to drought resistance in peas found in Córdoba. Researchers from the Institute for Sustainable Agriculture (IAS) in Córdoba, the Catholic University of Portugal, and Wageningen University (the Netherlands) have made progress in understanding how gene editing can facilitate “the breeding of new, better-adapted varieties” in the face of climate change, reads a press note by Fundación Descubre. “This will make it possible to design plants that can withstand water stress and have a satisfactory economic yield,” said Diego Rubiales, the study’s author.

AUSTRIA

Austria launches own Strategic Dialogue. Austrian agriculture minister launched a strategic process on agriculture this week titled “VISION 2028+”, with the aim of drawing up a long-term, well, vision for future agriculture and rural policy. The idea resembles the “strategic dialogue” on agriculture called for by EU Commission president von der Leyen in her State of the Union Speech in September but had already been in the works before then. As part of the process, lawmakers, employers’ organisations and unions, researchers, and representatives of agriculture and other economic sectors are set to discuss future agricultural policies.

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]