The way to Sustainability in European Agriculture: the EU Green Deal and the Farm to Fork strategy

Abstract

The EU is a region of productive but already relatively intensive agriculture with an array of unresolved environmental issues, and is currently a net exporter in terms of economic value in the agriculture and food sector. Given the challenges it appears that the European Union and its member states are uniquely suited to spearhead the challenge to push towards a more sustainable agriculture of the future – agriculture which maintains and enhances high productivity, which preserves and improves the production resource base, which moves towards more sustainable consumption patterns associated with reduced waste, and which at the same time radically improves the environmental performance of food production. Namely these are the main focus areas of the he EU Green Deal and the Farm to Food strategy of the Union. The study aims to analyse the future vision for sustainable agriculture in Europe that these strategic frameworks aim to, examining the EU Green Deal in the context of agricultural sustainability, and assessing the Farm to Fork strategy as means to achieving sustainable agriculture in Europe. The paper concludes with some remarks and considerations relating the EU Green Deal and the Farm to Fork strategy to the notion of sustainability in the context of agriculture.