In response to global policy developments including the Sustainable development Goals (SDGs) and the outcomes of the UN’s 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21), the European Commission launched Food 2030, its research and innovation policy framework for future-proofing European food systems. With the European Commission’s Farm to Fork strategy, published in April 2020, Sustainable Food Security (SFS) has indeed ascended to become a high-level European policy priority, transcending past interests in mere increase in productivity to encompass a broad range of issues. These include not only the provision of household dietary needs, but extend to the status of women, income and land distribution, food distribution and waste, and the protection and regeneration of the resource base upon which food production, and particularly, the European food and drink sector (the region’s largest manufacturing sector in terms of jobs and value added) depend. As such, the European Commission recognizes the need for innovative and interdisciplinary thinking that transcends the area of hard sciences and is capable of promoting healthy, sustainable and fair forms of producing, distributing and disposing of food.
In the Farm to Fork, the Commission recognizes that safe, sustainable and just food systems can play a central role in providing bottom-up regenerative solutions to environmental degradation and climate change, as well as affordable nutrients, clean food, and decent jobs, and educating consumers. However, the European agri-food sector and the supply chains upon which it depends, produce a sizable proportion of direct greenhouse gas emissions, and are responsible for much of the region’s material resource use. Moreover, the unequal distribution of value along supply chains (driven by consumer insistence on having access to high quality food at the lowest prices possible, without concern for the true social and environmental cost of food) means that small farm holders and SMEs struggle to earn a living, and by extension, cannot afford to engage in environmentally sustainable practices, instead employing those that lead to increasing levels of air pollution and soil contamination, creating toxic living conditions for humans and animals. In this context there also exists another ‘unfortunate paradox’: millions of European consumers live in food insecurity in an era that is witnessing rates of up to 53% of food wastage by EU households and 45% in pre-purchasing. Rather than an opportunity, food systems have become a tremendous source of social and environmental cost, putting SFS at risk.
If unchanged, the contemporary food scenario will push even more small-scale farmers into poverty, unfairly exploit workers and provide unhealthy and non-nutritional food to consumers. Similarly, in the absence of a coordinated intervention between the private and the public sector, the EU food systems will continue contributing to planetary overshoot by contaminating water, depleting soil, emitting a significant percentage of the global GHG, destroying biodiversity and producing an enormous amount of unaccounted externalities, of which food loss and waste is only the tip of the iceberg.
Thanks to the involvement of WFTO-Europe and FTAO, the FASS-Food has explored policy blockers and enablers at the EU level.
In the framework of this project, the role of the FTAO is twofold:
- Realizing and sharing a mapping analysis of windows of opportunity at EU level for a smart mix of EU policy and private measures to promote fair trade initiatives in the European Union, including role of legislation, soft law and labels.
- Realizing one international workshop to facilitate exchange of learnings and good practices in North North Fair Trade with a main focus on policy blockers and enablers (including and beyond the pilots involved in the project)