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The importance of Food Sovereignty for the Farm to Fork strategy and the New Green Deal. Insights and limits of the SAM and SAPEA reports 1

Authors:
Jessica Duncan at Wageningen University & Research
Jessica Duncan
Priscilla Claeys at Coventry University
Priscilla Claeys
Marta G. Rivera-Ferre at Spanish National Research Council
Marta G. Rivera-Ferre
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Abstract

Rationale: This brief reflects on the key scientific contributions of the recent publication of the report 'Towards a Sustainable Food System' by the Chief Scientific Advisors (Scientific Advice Mechanism-SAM) 1 and the SAPEA (Science Advice for Policy by European Academies) Evidence Review Report on 'Sustainable Food Systems for the EU' 2 that informed it. This is done with a view towards advancing food sovereignty and agroecology in the Farm to Fork Strategy. Context: Vulnerable food systems Covid-19 has exposed even more limits and dysfunctions in our globalized food systems: from our reliance on underpaid farm and food sector workers operating in poor working conditions (most often women and migrants), the risks associated with intensive animal farming, including zoonoses, to barriers facing small-scale producers when trying to access local markets, to gender inequalities and the additional risks faced by people with pre-existing diet-related health conditions. Covid-19 is also set to aggravate other shocks (e.g. crop failures or abrupt changes in food prices due to climate change and other extreme events), and threats (e.g. biocultural erosion, degrading soil fertility, ageing farm population, land concentration, lack of farm renewal). These shocks and threats reveal the fragility of the European food systems, which the SAPEA report makes clear is even more vulnerable due to its interdependent nature and the fact that 1
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AL.pdf
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All content in this area was uploaded by Jessica Duncan on Jun 29, 2020
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AL.pdf
Content uploaded by Jessica Duncan
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All content in this area was uploaded by Jessica Duncan on Jun 29, 2020
Content may be subject to copyright.
Academic Brief F2F 20200514 FIN
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All content in this area was uploaded by Jessica Duncan on Jun 23, 2020
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... Agroecology is both a science and a social movement where indigenous data as well as circular, social, and solidarity economies are emphasized (Duncan et al., 2020). Allowing natural pests to grow and building healthy soils can result in healthy plants that withstand disease and pathogens (Brzozowski and Mazourek, 2018). ...
... According to a French study, agroecology might supply Europe with a nutritious diet by 2050 by reducing GHGs and allowing the recovery of soils and biodiversity (Poux and Aubert, 2018). Agroecological food systems are essential for maintaining natural biodiversity, averting fires, and preserving cultural history, resulting in a well-preserved and vibrant countryside in rural areas (Duncan et al., 2020). ...
... The Green Deal's key underlying issue will be maintaining priority in EU and national policy planning during the long implementation period. According to Article 9 of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture and Article 19 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants, the EU and its Member States must ensure that seed policies, plant variety protection, and other intellectual property laws are in place (Duncan et al., 2020). Changing frames or challenging the underlying narratives and assumptions that drive policies can pave the way for major policy changes. ...
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... L'obiettivo di questa strategia è infatti quello di costruire un sistema alimentare equo, sano e rispettoso dell'ambiente, garantendo una produzione alimentare sostenibile, assicurando la sicurezza alimentare, promuovendo un consumo alimentare sostenibile, riducendo la perdita di cibo e combattendo le frodi alimentari (EC., 2020). Secondo Duncan et al. (2020) l'agroecologia dovrebbe essere centrale nella nuova strategia Farm to Fork. L'agroecologia è definita come "l'applicazione delle scienze ecologiche allo studio, alla progettazione e alla gestione di agroecosistemi sostenibili" (Altieri, 1995). ...
... L'agroecologia è definita come "l'applicazione delle scienze ecologiche allo studio, alla progettazione e alla gestione di agroecosistemi sostenibili" (Altieri, 1995). Un vantaggio dell'agroecologia è che può essere facilmente adattata alle condizioni locali (Duncan et al., 2020). Inoltre l'agroecologia riduce la dipendenza dagli input esterni e può tradursi in prezzi equi per i produttori e cibo sano per i consumatori (Duncan et al., 2020). ...
... Un vantaggio dell'agroecologia è che può essere facilmente adattata alle condizioni locali (Duncan et al., 2020). Inoltre l'agroecologia riduce la dipendenza dagli input esterni e può tradursi in prezzi equi per i produttori e cibo sano per i consumatori (Duncan et al., 2020). Ma forse l'elemento più importante, guardando alle sfide attuali che dobbiamo affrontare, è l'impatto che l'agroecologia ha sui cambiamenti climatici, stimolando una forma più sostenibile e più resiliente di agricoltura (Altieri et al., 2015 2019), grazie al miglioramento della qualità del suolo. ...
Libro "Per fare un Orto" dal progetto Ortobiattivo: agroecologia per la produzione sostenibile di ortaggi nutraceutici
Book
Full-text available
  • Apr 2022
Capitoli del dr. Domenico Prisa del Libro "Per fare un Orto" * Possibile Utilizzo di Biostimolnati a base di humus di lombrico liquido per il miglioramento della qualità e della protezione di piante di basilico * Uso di Effective Microorganisms EM per migliorare la qualita e la fioritura di bulbose ornamentali
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... Much critical work has already gone into unpacking the broader implications of these strategies. For example, in the EU's Farm to Fork Strategy (F2F), which is at the heart of the European Green Deal (EC, 2020), we see that the EU remains committed to a growth strategy that is antithetical to realizing food sovereignty and other interconnected sustainability goals wherein the F2F perpetuates entrenched inequalities in the food system (Alberdi et al., 2020;Duncan et al., 2020). F2F thus falls short of rebalancing power in the food system and strengthening farmers' positions in the food value chain, and instead foregrounds technocratic solutions and economic competitiveness (Omar & Thorsøe, 2023). ...
Knowing soils – Perspectives beyond growth in carbon farming
Article
Full-text available
  • Nov 2024
This article works with the idea that radical solutions in agri-food systems require multiple ways of knowing soils beyond the dominant scientific practices. Using a relational lens that invites us to think with soils, this article lifts our gaze to human-soil relationships in creating post-growth food systems. In the context of a grassroots initiative in Sweden that advances regenerative carbon farming as a transformational pathway to food systems within planetary boundaries, poetic inquiry is used to bring the often-unheard perspectives of "knowing soils" to the fore; how we know about soils matters.
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... The research on food systems transformations has importantly bloomed (Gliessman, 2016;Hubeau et al., 2017;IPES-Food and ETC Group, 2021;Orozco-Meléndez and Paneque-Gálvez, 2022;Schmidt-Traub et al., 2019). However, the paths to follow in order to accomplish such transformations remain contested (Canfield et al., 2021;Davies, 2020;Duncan et al., 2020;Rivera-Ferre, 2020). ...
A research framework to investigate food systems at a national scale
Article
Full-text available
  • Jan 2025
  • ECOL ECON
This article aims to advance understandings of food systems functioning at a national level and explore ways for its transformation towards sustainability and social justice. Integrating food regime theory from political economy with social metabolism from ecological economics, and surplus/reproduction from feminist economics, we develop a novel research framework which combines six dimensions-food systems governance, monetary agrifood chain, socio-metabolic agrifood chain, surplus/reproduction, socioecological impacts, and conflicts & levers of change-encompassing 34 elements linked through six key connections. The research framework highlights the role of cheap food for the social reproduction of the labouring population in capitalism. Since national states play important roles in maintaining food regimes, we conducted a critical literature review through which we identified the main contributions and limitations of studies of food regimes at the national level aimed at foreseeing exit ways beyond the current corporate food regime. This regime is one of the main drives of the overcoming of planetary boundaries. An agroecological transition and food system change is needed to address this socio-ecological crisis, and this requires new food polices at a national level as well. This is why we consider it essential to integrate social metabolism with the approaches of food regimes and surplus/ reproduction.
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... Although scholars from European universities and research institutes have assessed the F2F Strategy's potential for sustainability and social inclusivity (Alberdi et al. 2020), and for advancing food sovereignty and agroecology (Duncan et al. 2020), the existing literature was brief and a thorough analysis of the F2F Strategy for addressing power imbalances and strengthening the position of farmers was lacking (EC 2022e). Therefore, the objective of this article is to analyse the dominant discourse in the F2F Strategy and related EU food policy documents, specifically focusing on how power imbalances affecting small and medium-sized farmers in the food chain are recognized and addressed through policy interventions for a just transition towards a sustainable EU food system. ...
Rebalance power and strengthen farmers’ position in the EU food system? A CDA of the Farm to Fork Strategy
Article
Full-text available
  • Sep 2023
  • AGR HUM VALUES
The Farm to Fork (F2F) Strategy at the heart of the European Union’s Green Deal set out to create a “just transition” towards a sustainable food system, with benefits for all actors. We conducted a critical discourse analysis (CDA) to explore discourses around power in the food system and farmers’ position in the communication and implementation of the Farm to Fork Strategy. Discourse analysis encapsulates various scientific methodologies for deciphering the meaning behind the creation and communication of different forms of language and identify power dynamics, amongst other aspects. We identified two prior discourses in one of the objectives of the European Union’s new Common Agricultural Policy (2023-27). Our analysis found that the discourses, namely “rebalance power in food system” and “strengthening farmers’ position in value chains,” are marginalized in favour of an innovation-investment discourse, indicative of greater financialization and technologization based on techno-finances fixes in transforming the European Union agri-food system. We argue that entities representing agri-business interests have been influential in the policymaking process and voices representing smallholder and medium-sized farmers’ transformational discourses have been excluded.
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... Together with the Biodiversity Strategy it has also been listed among "some of the world's most ambitious efforts to catalyse a food system transition" (Candel, 2022, p.296), with ambitious targets (Mowlds, 2020, p. 20). However, it was also criticised for claiming to intervene in the transition to sustainable food systems without providing a clear definition of how sustainability in food systems is envisioned (Schebesta and Candel, 2020, p. 586;Duncan et al, 2020, p. 3). Definitions, principles and requirements about the sustainability framework, in fact, will not be published until the end of 2023 (F2F, p. 8) and even the European Parliament in their Initiative Report in response to the Farm to Fork Strategy calls on the Commission to promote a societal dialogue on a common understanding of sustainability and its various components, on the path towards its proposal for a legislative framework for a sustainable food system (2021, p. 13). ...
SEEDS OF TRANSITION? A Critical Discourse Analysis of Transition in the EU Farm to Fork Strategy from the Perspective of Cultivated Diversity
Thesis
Full-text available
  • Jul 2022
This research adopts the principles of sustainability transition management, within the Multi Level Perspective (MLP), to analyse the EU Farm to Fork Strategy (together with the complementary Biodiversity Strategy) on four levels: the definition of sustainability it wants to achieve, what form of governance is proposed for the transition, whether a shift in relationships of power is envisaged and what practices are implied to constitute sustainable farming. I compare and contrast the content of the Strategies with three main pillars of sustainability from the perspective of cultivated diversity: 1. seeds: form part of wider socio-economic and cultural-ecological interactions between farmers and their communities, and their diversity is the outcome of interactions that value it; 2. farmers: with their proactive management have historically maintained genetic diversity in seed and fields as custodians of the landscape; 3. practices: diversity in seed and landscape is determined by breeding and growing practices; when localised, distributed, knowledge intensive, in synergy with the rest of the ecosystem, these are often termed agroecological. My question with regards to transition management is then whether the strategy is actually leading a transformational process of change as it claims to be doing. Independent of what it claims, I also investigate whether the Strategy might offer a window of opportunity for change in the context of the historical transition that - in its attempt to address the shortcomings of the Green Revolution and industrialisation of farming - has led us to the contemporary focus on ‘sustainable agriculture’. In the language of MLP the Strategy is a policy artefact of the regime, which reacts to and takes a stand on a process of ongoing change, under pressure at the landscape level by climate change and biodiversity loss, and in the face of increased visibility of and popular support for alternative ways of farming. In doing that, it prompts both other regime and niche players to respond. My observations lead me to conclude that, while the Strategy may only aim at a trajectory adjustment to the current paradigm of industrialised productivist agriculture (rooted in economic growth, the dominance of the market and fuelled by technological innovation), rather than transformational change, it does open a window of opportunity for transitional change, in so far as it provides further anchoring of the cultivated diversity niche to the regime and a better-grounded negotiating space for cultivated diversity to take advocacy forward.
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Carbon Footprint of an Extensively Raised, Low-Productivity Sheep Population
Article
Full-text available
  • Aug 2024
Citation: Reyes-Palomo, C.; Díaz-Gaona, C.; Sanz-Fernández, S.; Muñoz-Cobos, I.; Aguilera, E.; Rodríguez-Estévez, V. Carbon Abstract: Extensive traditional livestock systems currently face various threats, leading to their disappearance. An example of these extensive livestock farming systems is the production of the Lojeña sheep breed in the Sierra de Loja (Granada, Spain), with a census of 24,511 ewes in 2021. The aim of this work is to calculate the carbon footprint (CF) of this local breed in this region. This study is based on data collected from 27 Lojeña sheep farms producing weaned lambs (≤14 kg, 25 farms), fattened lambs (≈25 kg, 7 farms), culled animals (24 farms) and greasy wool (27 farms). Most of these farms (78%) were organically (ORG) certified and seven were conventionally (CONV) managed. The analysed farms represent 93% of the total number of farms producing Lojeña sheep in the Sierra de Loja. The CF was calculated with a "cradle to farm gate" approach. The average C footprints were 27.5 ± 6.8 kg CO 2 eq kg LW −1 for weaned lambs, 21.8 ± 8.5 kg CO 2 eq kg LW −1 for fattened lambs, 4.1 ± 2.6 kg CO 2 eq kg LW −1 for culled animals and 2.2 ± 0.6 kg CO 2 eq kg −1 for greasy wool, with a not statistically different average CF in ORG than in CONV farms. Enteric fermentation represents the main source of emissions (>60%) in all the products, and external feeding (including transport, and emissions from producing the feed) represents the second one (>10%). There was an inverse relationship between CF and productivity (lambs sold ewe −1 year −1), leading to lower footprints on those farms with the higher productivity. A direct relationship between CF and stocking rate (livestock units ha −1) has been identified.
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AGROECOLOGICAL CROP PROTECTION: BRIDGING FUNDAMENTAL ECOLOGY AND ECONOMIC ECOLOGY
Article
Full-text available
  • Jun 2024
National Agricultural Research Project (NARP) has partitioned land mass of India into 127 agroecological zones based on soil characteristics and cropping patterns. This also have importance over crop protection. Agroecology refers to the science of the relationships between an organism and its environment modified by human beings for food production. Insects are the major damaging factor in agriculture and they pose a serious threat to global food production. In order to avoid the crop loss by insect pests, many pesticides are used which pose a very serious threat to environment and other organisms of mother earth. The development of crop production technology with less impact on other lifeform's in the environment raises its demand now which will be a long-term control too. Crop protection measures developed based on agroecological factors are called as "Agroecological crop protection" measure. There are various elements and approaches to be considered for implementing successful agroecological crop protection at various level.
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Driving the Digital and Sustainable Transition Through Law: Assessing the Food Consumer’s Legal Toolkit
Chapter
  • Mar 2024
With the Farm to Fork Strategy on the one hand and the Digital Services Act package on the other, the European Union is in the process of drafting a new policy framework on both food systems and the digital economy. In fact, organic to the European Green Deal is the need to align the entire food chain to sustainability criteria, and the Farm to Fork Strategy action plan includes a proposal for a legislative framework for sustainable food systems. In parallel, the adoption of new acts governing e-commerce shows the need for bringing fair practices in the growing economic sector of the digital and sharing economy. Stemming from an analysis of the structural characteristic of different food platforms, the chapter aims at collocating the phenomenon into the wider EU regulatory and policy picture. The chapter adopts a food consumer-centred perspective and interrogates the EU legal framework to clarify what are the instruments granted by the law to citizens for fulfilling their food-related rights, needs and choices while navigating the digital market. The study will first give an account of the most recent advancements in EU food law for the promotion of the healthiness of diets, then it will focus on the growing attention by EU institutions to the protection of non-health-related considerations, and thirdly the analysis will delve into the so-called digital consumers’ rights, i.e. rights recognized by EU law to consumers when they use digital services. The chapter offers a synthetic assessment of the current challenges and future directions in the food legal environment.
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A zöld üzleti gondolkodás és a zöld marketing lehetőségei és kihívásai
Book
Full-text available
  • Jun 2023
A 21. század legnagyobb kihívásai a globális és lokális természeti és társadalmi problémákhoz kapcsolódnak: a 2020-as évek elején a világ visszafordíthatatlanul alakul át körülöttünk. Online és offline tevékenységeink megváltoztak, fogyasztási szokásaink és prioritásaink átrendeződtek: új szempontok befolyásolják rövid és hosszú távú döntéseinket. Ezen átalakulások során a zöld gondolkodás és a fenntartható fejlődés kérdésköre megkerülhetetlenné vált: egyre jobban befolyásolja életünket és minden-napjainkat a klímaváltozás, illetve a klímaváltozás okaival és közvetett és közvetlen hatásaival kapcsolatos tudásunk. Jelen kötet célja, hogy a zöld üzleti gondolkodással és a zöld marketinggel kapcsolatos magyar kutatásokat 2023 nyarán összegezze. Egyrészt be szeretnénk mutatni a legaktuálisabb kutatások eredményeit, ezzel is segítve a döntéshozók munkáját. Másrészt lehetőségeket és jó példákat is szeretnénk prezentálni: olyan megoldásokat – és azok korlátait – amelyek jelenleg is működnek, vagy működhetnek, és amelyeket követve a gazdaság szereplői is hozzájárulhatnak egy fenntarthatóbb jövő megalkotásához.
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The Number, Size, and Distribution of Farms, Smallholder Farms, and Family Farms Worldwide
Article
Full-text available
  • Feb 2016
  • WORLD DEV
Numerous sources provide evidence of trends and patterns in average farm size and farmland distribution worldwide, but they often lack documentation, are in some cases out of date, and do not provide comprehensive global and comparative regional estimates. This article uses agricultural census data (provided at the country level in Web Appendix) to show that there are more than 570 million farms worldwide, most of which are small and family-operated. It shows that small farms (less than 2 ha) operate about 12% and family farms about 75% of the world’s agricultural land. It shows that average farm size decreased in most low- and lower-middle-income countries for which data are available from 1960 to 2000, whereas average farm sizes increased from 1960 to 2000 in some upper-middle-income countries and in nearly all high-income countries for which we have information.
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"Greening" global food governance
Article
Full-text available
  • Sep 2015
It has been argued that there are two broad criteria to judge humanity’s success in feeding itself: “(i) the proportion of people whose access to basic nutritional requirements is secure; and (ii) the extent to which global food production is sustainable” (Daily et al., 1998, p. 1291). According to these criteria, we have failed. First, 870 million people worldwide were estimated to be chronically undernourished in the period from 2010 to 2012 (FAO, 2012a). Second, the industrial model of global food production and distribution is not environmentally sustainable. Approximately 19 to 29 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions are directly attributed to agriculture. Agriculture is also the leading driver of deforestation and forest degradation globally, a process that accounts for an additional 17 percent of global carbon emissions (Vermeulen, Campbell, & Ingram, 2012).
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The Politics of Reflexive Governance: Challenges for Designing Adaptive Management and Transition Management
Article
Full-text available
  • Jun 2011
  • ECOL SOC
New concepts of governance take account of ambivalence, uncertainty, and distributed power in societal change. They aim for reflexivity regarding the limits of prognostic knowledge and actual control of complex processes of change. Adaptive management and transition management are two examples that evolved from the analysis of social-ecological and sociotechnical systems, respectively. Both feature strategies of collective experimentation and learning. In this paper, we ask how these two designs of reflexive governance consider politics. Based on a framework of different dimensions and levels of politics, we show that they are mainly concerned with problem solving by a focal process, but conflict and asymmetric power relations, as well as the embedding of processes within broader political contexts, are neglected. We suggest two routes for integrating politics into the design of reflexive governance: (1) recognize the politics of learning for sustainable development and develop safeguards against domination and capture by powerful actors, and (2) systematically consider the embedding of governance designs in political contexts and their ongoing dynamics for political fit.
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Human Rights and the Commons: Exploring Approaches to the Governance of Land and Natural Resources beyond Indigenous Peoples' Rights. The Case of Peasants
Article
  • Jul 2019
  • Int J Minor Group Right
Worldwide, 2.5 billion people today depend on lands managed through customary, community-based tenure systems. Although land and natural resources are recognised as essential elements for the realisation of many human rights, international human rights law does not recognise a human right to land, except for indigenous peoples. With the recent adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and other people working in rural areas ( undrop ), the right to land is now recognised for new categories of rural workers. This article explores the governance of land and natural resources beyond the case of indigenous peoples’ rights. It argues that undrop contains key and mutually reinforcing elements of the human rights and collective action approaches to the governance of land and natural resources, and therefore has the potential to ensure the social and environmental ‘viability’ of the commons.
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Contextualizing Reflexive Governance: the Politics of Dutch Transitions to Sustainability
Article
  • Sep 2007
How does steering for sustainability work within the world of contemporary politics, where roles are increasingly ambiguous and power dispersed? This paper explores this question empirically by studying the practice of reflexive governance—a mode of steering that encourages actors to scrutinize and reconsider their underlying assumptions, institutional arrangements and practices. The practice of reflexive governance has been conceptualized in various ways: as a strategic process of opening up and closing down, as a state-led activity of facilitating socio-technological transitions, and as a mode of network co-ordination to promote system innovation. What all these accounts underplay is the political context of reflexive processes, and the politics that they generate. This paper offers an alternative conceptualization of reflexive governance that situates sites of reflexivity within a broader discursive system composed of multiple arenas, actors and forms of political communication. Applying this framework to a Dutch case study reveals a host of struggles involved in enacting reflexive governance, particularly as actors try to reconcile the demands of reflexivity (being open, self-critical and creative) with the demands of their existing political world (closed preferences, agenda driven, control). The analysis sheds light on the work—and indeed politics—involved in legitimizing more reflexive modes of governing for sustainability.
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Extra-EU28 trade of food, drinks and tobacco (SITC 0+1), by main partners
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Eurostat. Extra-EU28 trade of food, drinks and tobacco (SITC 0+1), by main partners. Code: tet00034. R2020).
Declaration of Nyéléni: Declaration of the Forum for Food Sovereignty
  • Jan 2007
  • La Via
La Via Campesina. Declaration of Nyéléni: Declaration of the Forum for Food Sovereignty. Nyéléni 2007 (2007). Available at: http://nyeleni.org/spip.php?article290.
Voluntary Guidelines to support the progressive realization of the right to adequate food in the context of national food security
  • Jan 2004
  • Fao
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Agroecology as a Science , a Movement and a Practice 2 Two Major Historical Periods of Agroecology
  • Jan 2011
  • AGRON SUSTAIN DEV
  • 503-515
  • Wezel
Wezel, a et al. Agroecology as a Science, a Movement and a Practice 2 Two Major Historical Periods of Agroecology. Agron. Sustain. Dev. 29, 503-515 (2011).
The Ten Elements of Agroecology: Guiding the transition to sustainable food and agricultural systems
  • Jan 2019
  • Fao
FAO. The Ten Elements of Agroecology: Guiding the transition to sustainable food and agricultural systems. (2019). Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. http://www.fao.org/3/i9037en/I9037EN.pdf