Food security and agricultural and food policy in the EU

Introduction

The sustainability of our food and agriculture systems is an enormous challenge facing the planet and humanity. Currently an estimated 821 million people worldwide are undernourished, and two billion adults are overweight or obese.^​*​ Moreover, food production is a major contributor to rising global temperatures and the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, which jeopardises long-term food security.^​†​ In the EU, the urgency of confronting many of these challenges is set out in the European Green Deal^​‡​, an ambitious statement of intent from the European Commission, published in December 2019, for the EU to become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050 (Figure 1). To achieve this, it sets out a series of actions to green the economy and address the climate and environmental-related challenges facing different sectors across the EU. As part of the Green Deal the Commission is set to publish a Farm to Fork Strategy to inform the direction of travel of the CAP post-2020 and other policies related to food and farming. This is part of the efforts being made to formulate a more sustainable food policy at the EU level.

Purpose

The aim of this briefing is to examine the multi-dimensional nature of food security and the need for a wider discourse on the underlying sustainability challenges for food security in an EU context, which are often missing from the debate.

The briefing starts by exploring the concept of food security from the perspective of the EU. This is followed by a look at some sustainability dimensions of EU food production, their implications for long-term food security and the role the CAP has played as the EU’s main policy influencing the development of its food and farming systems. The briefing concludes with some reflections on the importance of taking a wider sustainability perspective on the EU’s role in domestic and global food security within the reform of the CAP post-2020 and the forthcoming Farm to Fork Strategy.

Use of the term food security in an EU policy context

Food security is often referred to in discussions on the development of food and farming policies both at the EU and international level. The most recent global definition of food security was adopted at the World Food Summit (WFS) of 1996 and reaffirmed at the last WFS in 2009 which states that:

It recognises four dimensions of food security as follows:

• availability (of sufficient quantities of appropriate quality food);
• access (to adequate resources for acquiring appropriate food)
• utilisation (of food through adequate diet, clean water, sanitation and health care); and
• stability (of supply by providing access to adequate food at all times – essentially fulfilling the other three dimensions).^​§​

For food security to exist these four dimensions should be sufficiently present.^​§​

The definition of food security, however, does not explicitly highlight the sustainability dimension of food production, although it is inherent in terms of ensuring the ‘stability’ of our food supply in the long-term. The absence of this explicit recognition could be one of the reasons why sustainability does not get the focus it requires in the debates surrounding food security.

In EU policy-making the concept of food security has been widely used to legitimise agricultural and food policy choices, notably under the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP). However, the term can have different meanings and understandings amongst stakeholder groups and policymakers.^​¶​ Due to the ill-defined nature of food security in an EU context the relationship between the CAP and food security is hotly contested amongst different stakeholders and policymakers. While many discourses are used to justify the development of the CAP in this respect two narratives are particularly evident.^​#​ On the one hand a ‘productivist’ narrative argues that the CAP should be used to stimulate agricultural production and increase productivity for the purpose of increasing food availability. Under this trajectory food security is often cited as a kind of public good to secure Europe’s food supply and contribute to global food production. This is despite the production of food clearly being a private good.^​**​ Where this narrative considers environmental and climate issues, these are all too often seen as constraints to production rather than opportunities to secure the long-term capacity of the land to produce food. 

On the other hand ‘environmental’ or ‘public goods’ narratives are used to highlight the long-term sustainability benefits of farming systems in which the provision of economic, social and environmental goods and services go hand in hand. This line of thinking argues that sustainable farming systems are an essential precondition for food security and for safeguarding Europe’s productive capacity in the long-term.

Both narratives have influenced successive reforms of the CAP to varying degrees. However, to date there has been limited success in reconciling these contested narratives, despite the potential to reconcile the underlying drivers of both. This has resulted in a policy that lacks a clear direction of travel in relation to its response to food security. For instance, the results of the 2013 CAP reform show that while there is greater recognition of the environmental and climate challenges facing the EU agricultural sector, these concerns are not at the heart of the policy, given the continuing dominance of direct payments which provide largely untargeted income support to farmers.^​††​ While a similar picture is evident in the post-2020 CAP reform, greater attention has started to be given to a ‘food sustainability’ narrative that has emerged in recent years, calling for greater focus on sustainable food consumption as well as production.^​‡‡​ The failure to reconcile these contested narratives also has significant implications for how the forthcoming Farm to Fork Strategy and subsequent stakeholder debates might pave the way for the EU to formulate a more sustainable food policy for the future. A brief overview of how food security has been used to influence the policy design of the CAP is set out in Box 1.