A Farm to Fork Strategy for a fair, healthy and environmentally-friendly food system
Updated on 24.06.2024
The Farm to Fork Strategy aims to make the European food system more sustainable by ensuring it is fair, healthy, and environmentally friendly. It targets several areas, including food production, processing, distribution, consumption, and waste. The strategy seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, dependency on pesticides and antimicrobials, and excess fertilisation. It also promotes organic farming, animal welfare, and biodiversity.
Key objectives and (or) targets related to cities & regions
One of the objectives of the Farm to Fork strategy is to reduce the GHG emissions of the overall food system to contribute to the goal of climate neutrality by 2050. It also aims to ensure food security, public health, and reverse the loss of biodiversity. Achieving these goals requires a collective approach involving all levels of governance. The European Regional Development Fund will invest, through smart specialisation, in innovation and collaboration along the food value chains. In an interview, the rapporteur for the Farm to Fork Strategy suggested that cities and regions could act as key players in the transition to a sustainable food system, as they must be involved in the implementation and monitoring of the strategy. They should also be involved in designing eco-schemes at both European and national levels.
Interreg Europe has identified several good practices regarding the implementation of the strategy in cities and regions:
- Food waste reduction: Ecowaste4Food
- Circular biological streams: BIOREGIO
- Resource efficiency and circular models for SMEs: ENHANCE and CESME
- Systemic design for circular economy transition: RETRACE
- Green public procurement: GPP4Growth, CircPro, GPP-STREAM
- Circular Business Models: GRESS, COLOUR CIRCLE, REDUCES, and REPLACE
- Industrial symbiosis: SYMBI and TRIS
Examples of how it was adopted/transposed by Member States
Progress on the use and risks of chemical pesticides is reported yearly and tracked here: https://food.ec.europa.eu/plants/pesticides/sustainable-use-pesticides/farm-fork-targets-progress/eu-trends_en.
In Germany, a Commission for the Future of Agriculture (Zukunftskommission Landwirtschaft or ZKL) was created in 2020. It was tasked with creating a proposal for an agriculture and food system that is ecologically, economically, and socially sustainable. The report was published in 2021 and can be found here. Its aim is to guide future measures for sustainable agriculture, in line with the EU Strategy.
e.g. commercial, residential, service, industrial
