The European Commission’s communication on a vision for agriculture and food, published in February 2025, aims to secure the long-term competitiveness and sustainability of the farming and food sector. The document consists of four distinct parts: making agriculture an attractive sector with affordable food for all, a competitive and resilient sector, a future-proof sector that is sustainable and contributes to food security, and a vibrant sector with fair living and working conditions. To future-proof the vision, a foresight ‘wind-tunnelling’ exercise was conducted using the Reference foresight scenarios on the global standing of the EU in 2040, developed by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. The scenarios (Storms, Endgame, Struggling synergies, and Opposing views), provide a set of four different plausible contexts to test the vision, with a view to suggesting developments that would make it more robust. While the scenarios do not predict the future, they can point towards challenges and opportunities the future might bring. The participatory workshop we conducted in March 2025 showed that vision statements appear to be more plausible in scenarios where sustainability, environmental protection, and social cohesion are prioritised. In contrast, they may be less robust if the focus is stronger on economic growth, competitiveness, and deregulation, while putting issues such as sustainability or social cohesion aside. The EPRS foresight analysis of 12 vision statements across the four scenarios shows that the Commission’s statements related to sustainable protein sources, reduction of strategic dependencies and digitalisation are the most robust and work across the majority of scenarios. However – and while very important for the future of the sector – food labelling and functional rural areas might need to be made more robust to perform better across a range of different futures. The foresight exercise also highlighted the need for stronger policy coherence and more careful coordination to address the complex challenges facing the agricultural and food sector and achieve the vision, including climate change, social inequalities, and environmental degradation. Carrying out the vision will not be straightforward; the analysis shows that the document does not sufficiently consider the impact of factors outside the European Union’s control. Greater coherence between policies and more anticipatory governance in policymaking is therefore needed to ensure the future of agriculture and food in the EU.
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O artigo foi publicado originalmente em Think Tank – Parlamento Europeu.
