European Union forges on with organics amid food insecurity worries

Glacier FarmMedia – The rubber is hitting the road on the European Union’s drive toward vastly increased organic crop production.

The European Commission has approved the first slate of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) strategic plans submitted by seven member states.

The plans submitted by Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, Ireland, Poland and Portugal will guide agricultural policy in those countries for the 2023-27 period.

Why it matters: By increasing organic acreage, the EU will be less productive agriculturally, according to analysts.

“We are now one step closer to implementing a new CAP for the next five years,” EU agriculture commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski said in a news release announcing the approval of the first seven plans.

The commission is committed to the quick approval of the 21 remaining plans, which are supposed to be in place before Jan. 1.

The goal of the new CAP is to support the transition to sustainable agriculture. One key target is to have one-quarter of the EU’s farmland certified organic by 2030.

IFOAM Organics Europe, the umbrella organization for organic food and farming, says member states are well off target on achieving that goal but there will still be a massive increase in organic farming based on comments made by the commission in its press release.

“Substantial funding will support the development of organic production, with most countries aiming to double or even triple their (organic) farming area,” it stated.

For instance, France intends to double its area under organic farming to reach 18 per cent of total agricultural area by 2027. Spain’s plan calls for 20 per cent of its farmland to be organic by 2030.

Branden Leslie, manager of policy and government relations with Grain Growers of Canada, said the timing of this EU initiative is unfortunate because the world needs all the food it can get right now.

“The reality is that organic production simply has lower yields than conventional farming,” he said. “I don’t see how it’s possible to expand the number of acres of organic production and expect it to not have an impact on overall production.”

The only way that could happen is if the EU brought more land under cultivation, which flies in the face of its sustainability goals.

Leslie anticipated the initiative could provide an opportunity for competing grain exporters like Canada. EU exports have already been slumping in the past few years and with less production it will likely fall even further.

But with low carryover stocks of many commodities caused by drought and the war in Ukraine, it is probably not a good time for the EU to switch to growing lower-yielding crops, he said.

“It’s at odds with what our overall objective needs to be, which is sustainably increasing our overall production.”

Leslie worries that the EU’s push for increased organic agriculture production will spill into Africa, a region where it has considerable clout.

That same concern was espoused a couple of years ago by Gregg Doud, former chief agricultural trade negotiator for the Office of the United States Trade Representative.

In a speech to the Agricultural Business Council of Kansas City, he said the EU is abandoning the use of technology in agriculture.

“They have the Farm to Fork thing, which I call the Farm to Empty Fork because that’s what it’s going to be,” said Doud.

He added that the U.S. agriculture industry will continue to embrace technology and that Africa is going to be a key battleground for those two competing visions of agriculture.

“We are not going to let the EU send a message to Africa, or for that matter anywhere else in the world, that this is the direction to head,” said Doud.

– This article was originally published at The Western Producer.