The EU agrifood system: sovereign, healthy, sustainable?
Over the past century or so, the European agrifood sector has undergone rapid transformations, both in the agricultural sector and downstream. However, change has accelerated in the past three decades, with the 1992 reform of the Common Agricultural Policy that shortly preceded the creation of the...
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| Materyal Türü: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Dil: | Français |
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2026
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| Online Erişim: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Özet: | Over the past century or so, the European agrifood sector has undergone rapid transformations, both in the agricultural sector and downstream. However, change has accelerated in the past three decades, with the 1992 reform of the Common Agricultural Policy that shortly preceded the creation of the World Trade Organization, along with a degree of liberalisation in international agricultural trade. On the one hand, the introduction of new chemical products in crop protection and, on the other hand, their introduction in food processing have induced profound changes in farming, as well as in food habits, with far-reaching impacts on human health and the natural environment.
Presented by the European Commission in May 2020 and endorsed by the Council in October of the same year, the “From Farm to Fork” strategy acknowledged these detrimental effects of the agrifood system on human health and the natural environment, and proposed substantial changes in EU policies to make the system “fair, healthy, and sustainable”. However, since 2024, in reaction to the disruptive consequences of the war in Ukraine and under the pressure of farmers’ unions, lobbies of the chemical and food-processing industries, and a number of national governments, the quest for “food sovereignty” gained prominence in EU policies, which led to a gradual but significant dismantling of some of the most ambitious measures in the fields of food safety and environmental protection. While they represent substantial setbacks on the latter two major objectives, such changes are clearly not making the EU agrifood system more sovereign. Pursuing all four objectives (fairness, health, sustainability, and sovereignty) is indeed possible, but would require a complete reorientation of the system in the direction of agro-ecological farming and changes in the food-processing and retail industries, as well as in consumers’ food habits.
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