The report outlines a shared prospect for transforming European agriculture and food systems into more sustainable, competitive, and resilient models.

The Strategic Dialogue on the Future of EU Agriculture was launched by President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen in January 2024. The process brought together key-stakeholders from the agri-food system, including farmer representatives, civil society, rural communities, agri-food business and academia. The report was adopted unanimously by all the 29 involved stakeholders and builds a consensus on key issues such as food security, environmental sustainability, and economic viability. 

The report focuses on addressing planetary and geopolitical challenges that impact food production and security, while ensuring that the necessary changes benefit farmers, rural communities, and broader society.

Guiding Political Principles

The report presents ten political principles that guide this transformation:

1. The Time for Change is Now: Immediate action is needed to address the environmental and social challenges facing agriculture.
2. Cooperation and Dialogue: Effective collaboration across the entire food value chain is crucial to ensure a smooth transition.
3. Coherent Policies: Policies should be synergistic, creating enabling environments for sustainable development.
4. Strategic Role in Geopolitics: Food and agricultural production are vital for European security and must be prioritized in policy decisions.
5. Role of Young People: Engaging younger generations and promoting diversity in food systems is key to long-term sustainability.
6. Mutual Reinforcement of Sustainability Goals: Economic, environmental, and social sustainability should be seen as interconnected and mutually reinforcing.
7. Market-Driven Sustainability: Markets should be leveraged to drive sustainability and ensure fair distribution of value.
8. Technology and Innovation: Embracing technological advancements will help transition toward sustainable agriculture.
9. Healthier and Sustainable Diets: The shift towards balanced, sustainable diets is essential for public health and environmental goals.
10. Attractive Rural Areas: Rural development is crucial for food security, societal cohesion, and democracy​

Recommendations

The report emphasizes collaboration, fairness, and strategic planning across multiple levels and recommends the following:

1. Strengthening Farmers’ Position in the Food Value Chain: Encourage cooperation among farmers, reduce costs, increase efficiency, and ensure fair income by addressing unfair trading practices and improving transparency across the food chain.
2. Sustainability Pathways: Implement an EU-wide benchmarking system to harmonize on-farm sustainability assessments and harmonize methods to enable better comparisons and improvements.
3. Reforming the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP): The CAP must be updated to address challenges. This includes providing socio-economic support to farmers who need it most, a focus on rural development and improving environmental and animal welfare outcomes, and ensuring policies are aligned with long-term sustainability goals. The budget for environmental and climate actions need to substantially increase
4. Financing the Transition: Adequate funding mechanisms must be created to support the transition toward sustainable practices. A temporary Fund to support farmers in this change is being proposed.
5. Promoting Sustainability and Competitiveness in Trade Policy: Ensure coherence between trade and sustainability policies and review the approach to trade negotiations to recognize agriculture's strategic importance in international trade.
6. Making the Healthy and Sustainable Choice the Easy One: Create food environments that promote healthy, sustainable diets through policies such as improved labelling, fiscal tools, and support for plant-based proteins.
7. Enhancing Sustainable Farming Practices: Promote practices that protect ecosystems, reduce external inputs and advance decarbonisation, support the organic and agroecological farming practices and establish a nature restoration (outside CAP) support farmers and land managers to improve environmental outcomes.
8. Reducing GHG Emissions in Agriculture: Establish a comprehensive methodology for accounting greenhouse gas emissions, set specific reduction goals for different types of agriculture, and support emission-reducing innovations.
9. Creating Pathways for Sustainable Animal Farming in the EU: Develop a strategy for sustainable animal farming, revise animal welfare legislation, and establish an EU-wide animal welfare labelling scheme.
10. Better Preserving and Managing Farmland and Water: Set a legally binding objective of "no net land take by 2050", establish a European Observatory for Agricultural Land, and promote water-resilient agriculture and innovative plant breeding.
11. Promoting Robust Risk and Crisis Management: Strengthen risk management tools, investments and access of farmers to agricultural insurance, and reform the agricultural reserve to better handle exceptional and catastrophic risks.
12. Building an Attractive and Diverse Sector: Support generational renewal, attract young farmers by facilitating land mobility, better education and financial support. Promote gender equality and diversity, and ensure fair working conditions in the agriculture sector.
13. Improving Access to Knowledge and Innovation: Boost social and technical innovations by facilitating knowledge-sharing, investing in research, promoting digitalization, and supporting private-public partnership and streamline regulatory procedures to foster innovations.
14. Fostering a new culture of cooperation and governance: Establish a European Board on Agri-food to implement the recommendations, work towards inclusive policy making, smart administrative solutions and reductions of unnecessary bureaucratic burden.

The report emphasizes the critical role of European agriculture, acknowledging the significant challenges posed by climate change, biodiversity loss, and geopolitical conflicts. It considers the diversity and complexity of agri-food systems and calls for addressing the links, the interdependencies and trade-offs that have led to imbalances. The report highlights the importance of resilient supply chains and diversified production systems that reduce dependency on external inputs and fosters regional production and circular economy principles. The report of the Strategic Dialogue serves as an orientation for action to create socially responsible, economically profitable, and environmentally sustainable agri-food systems that will also impact global food systems.