EU Elections

EUROPEAN ELECTIONS
Pitched battles between farmers and police outside the European Parliament. Source: Paula Soler
The European Commission’s Farm-to-
Fork Strategy was originally hailed as a
highly-ambitious initiative that would
transform European agriculture. Four
years on, weeks out from the next European
Parliament elections, little is left
of this ambition, as farmers’ protests and
industry pressures have forced the commission
to drop most of the proposals.
Critics and environmentalists have
warned that this failure will dupe both
nature and farmers, as they caution
against agri-industry lobbying and farright
capture of MEPs.
The strategy, a major component of the
Green Deal, promised to be a transformative
push towards a more sustainable
food system. Instead of a sectoral focus,
the strategy took an unprecedented holistic
view of the entire food chain, integrating
environmental, agricultural and
health policy into an overarching framework,
with several directorate-generals
working together. Moreover, it was coupled
with ambitious and specific targets,
like a 50-percent reduction in pesticide
use.
The holistic approach was crucial for
Farm-to-Fork’s ambition, according to
experts. “Normally, agricultural policy
gets made by special institutions in close
collaboration between farming interests
and the policymakers, because food is
such a sensitive geopolitical and cultural
question for countries” said Nathalie
Bolduc, senior research fellow at thinktank
Institute for Sustainable Development
and International Relations (ID-
DRI).
However, with Farm to Fork, the commission
put the Directorate-General for
Health and Food Safety (DG SANTE) in
the lead, which is further removed from
the agricultural sector. “DG AGRI (the
Directorate-General for Agriculture and
Rural Development) was involved, but
wasn’t holding the pen. That’s a key difference,
as stakeholders who are close to
DG AGRI may have felt that they weren’t
being heard as much,” Bolduc observed.
And agricultural interests have now
come back to haunt the strategy. After
the war in Ukraine ignited concerns
over food security and a general backlash
against climate policy has swept Europe,
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