Crops tailor-made using new gene-splicing techniques should face fewer regulations than genetically modified organisms, EU negotiators agreed Thursday.  Critics are calling it a GMO rebrand; proponents say they are bringing science back in style. The late-night negotiations — dragged across the finish line with the help of the European Parliament’s far right — capped years of haggling over how to ease the path for a new generation of gene-editing technologies developed since 2001, when the EU’s notoriously strict regulations on GMOs were adopted. The deal’s backers tout NGT’s potential to breed climate-resilient plants that need less space and fertilizers to grow, and they argue the EU is already behind global competitors using the technology. But critics fear the EU is opening the door to GMOs and giving too much power to major seed corporations.   The agreement opens the door to “unlabelled — yet patented — GM crops and foods, boosting corporate market power while undermining the rights of farmers and consumers,” warned Franziska Achterberg of Save Our Seeds, an NGO opposing GMOs, calling the deal a “complete sell-out.” INNOVATION VS. CAPITULATION European lawmakers, however, were responding to fears that outdated GMO rules were holding back progress on more recent genomic tweaks with a lighter touch — and throttling innovations worth trillions of euros.  Currently, most plants edited using new precision breeding technology — which can involve reordering their DNA, or inserting genes from the same plant or species — are covered by the same strict rules governing GMOs that contain foreign DNA.  The deal struck by the EU’s co-legislators creates two classes for these more recent techniques. “NGT1” crops — plants that have only been modified using new tech to a limited extent and are thus considered equivalent to naturally occurring strains — would be eligible for less stringent regulations. In contrast, “NGT2” plants, which have had more genetic changes and traditional GMOs will continue to face the same rules that have been in place for over 20 years.  Speaking before the final round of negotiations, Danish Agriculture Minister Jacob Jensen argued that the bloc needs to have NGTs in its toolbox if it wants to compete with China and the U.S., which are already making use of the new tech.  The deal “is about giving European farmers a fair chance to keep up” echoed center-right MEP Jessica Polfjärd, the lead negotiator on the Parliament’s side of the deal. She added that the technology will allow for the bloc to “produce more yield on less land, reduce the use of pesticides, and plant crops that can resist climate change.” Polfjärd had struggled to keep MEPs on the same page even as the bill advanced into interinstitutional negotiations. Persistent objections from left-wing lawmakers, including a key Socialist, forced her to embrace support of lawmakers from the far-right Patriots for Europe, breaking the cordon sanitaire.  Martin Häusling, the Green parliamentary negotiator, called the result miserable, saying it gives a “carte blanche for the use of new genetic engineering in plants” that threatens GMO-free agriculture.  DAVID AND GOLIATH In a hard-won victory for industry, the final legislation allows for NGT crops to be patented.  For Matthias Berninger, executive vice president at the global biotech giant Bayer, it’s just good business. “When we talk about startup culture in Europe … we also need to provide reasonable intellectual property protections,” he said in an interview. Yet safeguards meant to prevent patent-holders from accumulating too much market power don’t go far enough for Arche Noah. The NGO advocating for seed diversity in Europe, warned of a “slow-motion collapse of independent breeding, seed-diversity and farmer autonomy” if the deal makes it to law as is. They have MEP Christophe Clergeau, the Parliament’s Social-Democrat negotiator who led the last-ditch resistance.  In an interview on Thursday morning, he gave it five to 10 years before small breeders have disappeared from the bloc and farmers are “totally dependent” on the likes of Bayer and other huge companies. (Berninger said Bayer doesn’t want to inhibit small breeders by enforcing patents on them.) The deal now needs to be endorsed by the Parliament and the Council of the EU before the new rules are adopted. At the end of the day, it’s up to consumers to pass judgment, DG SANTE’s food safety and innovation chief Klaus Berend said Thursday, appearing at the POLITICO Sustainable Future Summit directly before the late-night negotiations began.  “We know that in Europe, the general attitude toward genetically modified organisms and anything around it is rather negative,” he cautioned. The key question for new genomic techniques is “how will they be accepted by consumers?” Their acceptance, Berend added, “is not a given.” Rebecca Holland contributed to this report.

BRUSSELS — Europe’s food system depends on an endangered species: its farmers. Every year, thousands of them retire and fewer take their place. Across the countryside, barns are shuttered, land is leased to ever-larger holdings and rural schools quietly close. The result is fewer people growing food, more imports filling supermarket shelves and a profession slipping into decline. That’s the slow-moving crisis Brussels is set to confront on Tuesday, when Agriculture Commissioner Christophe Hansen unveils the EU’s Strategy for Generational Renewal in Agriculture — a plan to keep the next generation of food producers from giving up before they’ve begun. Young farmers have been asking lawmakers to act for well over a decade, said Peter Meedendorp, the 25-year-old president of the European Council of Young Farmers, or CEJA, speaking by phone as he rushed back from his tractor on the Dutch farm he runs with his father and brothers. In the run-up to the strategy’s release, Meedendorp has been splitting his time between the fields and Brussels. While he’s eager to see what Hansen delivers, he’s also wary: “To what extent can we make all the nice recommendations reality in the field if no finance is attached?”  The European Commission wants member countries to spend 6 percent of their Common Agricultural Policy money on generational renewal — double the current level. If countries make good on that target, CEJA’s cause could be on the receiving end of over €17 billion between 2028 and 2034, a budgetary boost compared with recent years. The question is whether the plan can actually stop Europe’s farms from disappearing. PRICED OUT Over a third of farm managers in Europe are over 65, while less than one in eight are under the age of 40.  “It’s not that young people don’t want to farm — it’s that it’s nearly impossible to start,” said Sara Thill, the 21-year-old vice president of Luxembourg’s young farmers group LLJ, in an interview in Brussels last week.  Young farmers struggle to find available and affordable land to start working. One hectare of arable land in the EU costs almost €12,000. That price rises to over €90,000 on average in Meedendorp’s native Netherlands, up from €56,000 a decade ago.  “When you start, the banks ask for guarantees your parents can’t give — it’s a vicious circle,” said Florian Poncelet, a 29-year-old beef farmer who heads Belgian regional young farmers’ association FJA. Roy Meijer, chair of the Dutch young farmers farmers’ group NAJK, put it bluntly: “Banks look at young farmers as risk. If you’re 25 and want to buy land, forget it.” Across Europe, young farmers sound more impatient than nostalgic. They see agriculture not as a tradition to protect but a business to reinvent. “Young farmers aren’t waiting for subsidies,” Meijer said, pushing back against the idea that they expect easy money from Brussels. What they want, he argued, is predictability — rules that don’t change with every new reform, and recognition that they’re entrepreneurs like any others. “People my age aren’t afraid of innovation,” he added. “We want to use drones, data, AI. But to invest, we need clear, long-term rules. You can’t build a business on shifting ground.” UPPING THE ANTE Brussels has been trying to lure new farmers for decades through its CAP, with mixed results. Member countries currently dedicate 3 percent of their EU-funded farm payments to young farmer schemes — about €6.8 billion between 2023 and 2027. Now Hansen wants to up the ante. A recent draft of the strategy, obtained by POLITICO, sets a goal to double the share of EU farmers under 40 to nearly a quarter by 2040. To get there, the Commission wants countries to spend 6 percent of their CAP budgets on young farmers, limit payments to retirees and offer loans of up to €300,000 for new entrants. It also urges capitals to use tax reform and land-use policies as tools to make farming more attractive, while touting the Commission’s own plans to publish a bioeconomy strategy next month. Young farmers’ groups worry the ambition may outstrip the means. Unlike the current farm budget, which enforces the 3 percent minimum, the 6 percent target is only aspirational. That has left CEJA concerned that some governments could spend even less. Young farmers fear that generational renewal will struggle to compete against other funding priorities, and that the new strategy’s fate may hinge less on good intentions than on the next CAP itself — a reform already under fire from both farm lobbies and lawmakers. Commission officials have pushed back on those criticisms, pointing to the various funding streams young farmers could access through the new “starter pack” in the future CAP and the upcoming generational renewal strategy. The Commission has also suggested restructuring CAP payments to divert funding from large farmers to smaller — and younger — ones.  Nonetheless, “not earmarking any money for a specific group of young farmers is a signal,” Meedendorp insisted. “We have a commissioner who bills himself as a young farmer commissioner, who is also the one proposing a CAP without any earmarking for young farmers.”

This article is part of the Europe’s looming water crisis special report. The herring-rich Baltic Sea has fed Sweden’s appetite for surströmming since the Middle Ages. The putrid-smelling fermented dish can only properly be made using herring caught in the brackish waters of the world’s youngest sea, as they are smaller than their Atlantic cousins. But now much of the Baltic Sea is quite literally dying — and herring numbers are plummeting. Cod were first to be hit. After a mysterious surge in population in the late 1970s, numbers plunged in the 1980s and are now so low Baltic cod fishing is virtually banned under EU law. Then came the herring decimation. Numbers are now 80 percent below 1970s levels — prompting panic from Sweden’s local fishers in a country where herring is an economic and culinary staple. But the fish’s importance extends beyond human use. “Herring is the engine of the whole Baltic Sea ecosystem, because it’s such an important food for birds, for seals, and it’s a predator of smaller fish,” said Johanna Fox, Stockholm-based director of the WWF Baltic Programme. “Losing cod was bad. Losing herring is catastrophic.” What’s behind this wipeout? The obvious answer — overfishing — is a key part of the story. Rising sea temperatures have also been blamed. But there’s another culprit: poo. Livestock manure from farms in countries bordering the Baltic, along with urine and chemical fertilizer, seeps through the soil and into groundwater, runs into rivers, and is eventually washed out into the sea. A portion of the Baltic Sea 1.5 times the size of Denmark is now considered the largest “dead zone” in the world — the victim of “eutrophication,” where the nitrates and phosphates in fertilizer over-nourish the water, prompting a surge in growth of some species, such as algae. These overtake and kill other species, block out the sun, and starve the water of oxygen. Eventually there’s no oxygen left and everything dies. (This effect may have contributed to the temporary surge of cod numbers in the late 1970s.) On top of the ecological destruction, the lack of oxygen means the dead organic matter turns from carbon into methane, a potent greenhouse gas that is released into the atmosphere. Recent studies suggest the Baltic Sea may become a net contributor to climate change. The overwhelming cause of this destruction is agriculture. And efforts to address the problem are failing badly.  A DIABOLICAL PROBLEM The Baltic Sea dead zone is the most dramatic example of a Europe-wide problem. Pig farms in Spain pollute groundwater. Fertilizer sprayed on crops and orchards pollutes Italian rivers. Manure from Dutch and Belgian dairy farms soaks into the soil, damaging biodiversity and creating toxic algal blooms on the coast. A third of Europe’s freshwater supply has unacceptably high levels of nitrate pollution, according to the European Environment Agency (EEA) — and the situation is not improving despite three decades of regulation. The answer, say environmental advocates, is to farm less intensively. But the politics of achieving that have proved diabolically difficult, and the will to act is fading. The EU farm lobby, always strong, has increased its influence in Brussels in the last 18 months, staging protests across the continent against EU green rules and gaining ever more support among the bloc’s most powerful political group, the conservative European People’s Party. With war on Europe’s doorstep and rising geopolitical and trade tensions, the argument that food security must come before environmental protection has steadily gained influence since the days of the Green Deal in the early 2020s. The cries of environmentalists, insisting this is a shortsighted trade-off, sound increasingly faint in Brussels. In recent discussions about the European Commission’s upcoming Water Resilience Strategy, multiple members of European Parliament told POLITICO that center- and far-right lawmakers had blocked efforts to write ambitious environmental protections into a parliamentary water proposal. That included scrubbing out all mentions of the European Green Deal and blocking a call from the Greens to strengthen enforcement of nitrate regulations. Instead, many worry nitrate regulations will be weakened through another simplification bill. The European Commission told POLITICO it is considering such a policy, though they did not say this would weaken the rules. A BRIEF HISTORY LESSON Nitrate pollution began to take off in the mid-20th century after German chemist Fritz Haber discovered a method to extract nitrogen directly from the atmosphere to manufacture chemical nitrogen fertilizer. That made production of cheap fertilizer far easier, revolutionizing food production. Today Haber’s method is key to ensuring the world has enough food to support soaring human populations. But it also released dangerous quantities of nitrates into the land and water. Just as digging up and burning fossil hydrocarbons in the form of coal, oil and gas has introduced extra carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, destabilizing the climate; so extracting inert nitrogen from the air and injecting it into the land and water has destabilized ecosystems. Add to that the nitrate-rich manure from increasingly intensive industrial livestock farming, and in many regions you have far more nutrients than nature can handle. “It is bringing whole ecosystems out of balance,” said Ingo Fetzer, a researcher on planetary boundaries at the Stockholm Resilience Center at Stockholm University. “Eutrophication creates massive oxygen depletion. All aquatic ecosystems depend on oxygen in the water. Eutrophication means you have fishes dying, small animals dying, but also land ecosystems that depend on fishes, like sea eagles. Also human communities depend on that.” THE NITRATES DIRECTIVE The causes of eutrophication have long been known. Back when understanding of climate change was in its infancy, EU policymakers designed a law to deal with nitrate pollution: the 1991 Nitrates Directive. The law aimed to restrict the amount of manure and chemical fertilizer spread on areas considered high-risk. To this day, the Nitrates Directive is the EU’s main tool to  control nitrate pollution. The trouble is, it’s not working. According to the EEA’s State of the Water report last year, nitrate levels in groundwater have remained the same since the beginning of the century. For surface water, there was a small improvement at first, but over the last 15 or so years progress has stalled. Ask experts why it’s not working, and you get a range of answers. Some blame exemptions granted to countries. Others blame rule-breaking by farmers and poor enforcement by member countries. Others say the rules simply aren’t strong enough. Caroline Whalley, manager of water industries and pollution at the EEA, says pollution from agriculture is by its nature difficult to monitor and control. “When you’ve got a pipe coming out of a factory and you’ve got a pollutant that comes from that factory, you can say, ‘Do something about it.’” she said. “But things like nitrates and pesticide are spread on the land. Some farmers may be doing a great job. Some areas may not be very susceptible to pollution … and in other areas … it’s very difficult to say, ‘It was you!’ because with nitrate everyone is using it. It’s very difficult to identify an owner.” Sara Johansson, a water expert at NGO the European Environmental Bureau, says poor implementation is a key problem, as is the EU’s willingness to grant exemptions — or “derogations” in Brussels jargon — to certain countries that request them, such as Denmark, the Netherlands and Ireland. Denmark, she says, has said it will no longer seek derogations. But Ireland and the Netherlands “are fiercely holding onto their derogations and renewing them. But they are also trying to find a way to get round the rules so they can continue keeping unsustainably high livestock numbers.” The Netherlands, a nitrate-pollution hotspot, last month announced it would push back its nitrogen targets by five years, in defiance of EU law. DON’T BLAME DEROGATIONS Still, the era of derogations may be coming to an end. Every four years, countries that want a derogation must make their case to the European Commission’s Nitrate Committee. Since the beginning of the Nitrates Directive, Ireland has has always got what it wanted — permission to spread 250 kilograms of nitrates per hectare, rather than the standard 170 kilograms. But in the last cycle the Commission put its foot down — sort of — and dropped the limit to 220 kilograms per hectare. That was during the Green Deal mandate, at the height of the Brussels’ pro-environment push. Ireland’s next derogation hearing is coming in the next few months, and Edward Burgess, an agricultural catchments specialist with the Irish government’s agriculture agency Teagasc, is not sure which way it will go. On the one hand, momentum in recent years has been to be less generous with derogations. On the other, the mood in Brussels since the swearing-in of the new Commission last December has been to put farmers’ needs ahead of the environment. But Burgess argues refusing derogations will have flow-on effects that could actually make matters worse. “The 250kg limit wasn’t plucked out of the air to allow people to farm at a level that would damage water,” he said. “It was based on research that found people farming at this level could do so without having a negative effect on water quality, as long as they did it properly.” Farmers with derogations are much more closely monitored by the authorities, and as a result their farming practices improve, he argues. Take the derogation away, and such engagement may drop. “It’s certainly not as simple as saying if we get rid of the derogation, everything will be hunky dory. My expectation is if we get rid of the derogation, there will be very little change, and if there is change, it will be worse.” The problem, he says, is that nitrate pollution is not simply a matter of quantity. It depends on the soil quality, the geography, the geology, and so on. A truly effective regulation would take all these matters into account. But the resources required to invest, train and regulate more location-specific practices would be huge. FARMERS VS ENVIRONMENT Whatever the reasons, the brute fact remains that nitrate pollution in Europe’s waters is not improving, and Brussels has displayed little willingness to address this fact. A draft of the European Commission’s upcoming Water Resilience Strategy, obtained by POLITICO, doesn’t give a single mention to nitrate pollution in the 34-page document. Nutrient pollution in general gets three mentions. Separately, the Commission’s environment department has been getting feedback from industry on the effectiveness of the Nitrates Directive, and expects to publish a report by the end of the year. But it is noncommittal on whether it will reform the rules. “Feedback from all stakeholders, including farmers, indicates that it [the Nitrates Act] remains very important and relevant for improving water quality by reducing nitrate pollution from agricultural sources,” an EU official told POLITICO in a written response, adding the review was also looking “at simplification and burden reduction potential.” The word “simplification” has become a mantra for the current Commission, part of its drive to reduce red tape for business. But it’s a word that worries Michal Wiezik, a member of European Parliament with the centrist Renew Europe group who led the agriculture committee’s work on Parliament’s recent report on water resilience. “They call it simplification, I call it deregulation,” he said. A strong water resilience strategy, Wiezik says, is much-needed. “But I don’t think at the end of the day it will be strong enough. The majorities in this house [European Parliament] are willing to downgrade it to something that does not ask too much effort from the farmers,” he said. “That’s the basic problem whenever there is legislation relating to agriculture, there is always this sentiment to defend the farmers.” Wiezik says Europe’s powerful farm lobby, represented by Copa Cogeca at the EU level, has a remarkable ability to influence policymakers, something that mystifies him. POLITICO contacted Copa Cogeca multiple times by phone and email to request an interview for this story, but received no response. As the politics in Brussels plays out, the vast dead zones in the Baltic Sea remain a striking example of the ecological destruction excessive fertilizer use can cause. Looming over all this, says WWF Baltic’s Fox, is the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) — the massive funding of food production that accounts for nearly a third of the EU budget. Currently, the CAP often works against environmental policy, Fox says — a point the European Court of Auditors agrees with. “The CAP promotes large, more intensive farming,” Fox said, “and with large more intensive farming, you get more intensive use of fertilizers.” The Nitrates Directive is an inadequate check on the colossus that is the CAP — it’s the latter where real reform is needed, Fox says. But fundamentally changing the CAP would involve a big fight with farmers — something recent events suggest the Commission has little appetite for.

The first 100 days of the new European Commission are behind us and we are seeing that the drive toward competitiveness, resilience, sustainability and growth is real. It will be pivotal that every business, sector and industry stay ahead of the curve when it comes to the development and adoption of emerging technologies, including the transformative potential of artificial intelligence (AI) — a critical catalyst for progress. At PepsiCo, we’ve been leveraging AI for over a decade. From seed to shelf, and from farm to fork, we’ve taken an AI-first approach to fundamentally reshape how PepsiCo plans, makes, moves, sells and delivers our products. It’s been a powerful tool for our ongoing transformation, and we’ll continue to harness the power of AI — using it responsibly to benefit our business, our people and society. > we’ll continue to harness the power of AI — using it responsibly to benefit > our business, our people and society Promoting sustainable agriculture AI is a crucial enabler of productive agriculture. Every bag of Lay’s and Doritos chips or bowl of Quaker oats, begins with high-quality ingredients, grown by one of the tens of thousands of farmers in PepsiCo’s global supply chain. Across the globe we’ve partnered with farmers to capture over a million data points about crop yields, soil health, weather patterns and much more. With machine learning, data can be analyzed to identify improvements that help farmers conserve resources while increasing yields. Via Pepsico This data-driven approach empowers farmers to adopt more intelligent growing practices, driving both sustainable agriculture processes and long-term growth. Optimizing our end-to-end value chain AI has been deeply integrated across our supply chain to help us streamline production, enhance logistics and support proactive maintenance so that our products reach consumers reliably and sustainably. At our Walkers factory in the UK, we’ve implemented AI-powered sensors that monitor our machinery and equipment in real-time. By using advanced sound-based diagnostics, we’re able to decrease unplanned downtime. This allows us to deliver our products reliably and ensures our mechanics can focus on planned maintenance rather than reactive repair. Leveraging AI also enables more seamless and sustainable deliveries. We’re able to analyze traffic patterns, weather conditions and delivery schedules to quickly identify the most efficient routes for transportation. This reduces costs and minimizes the carbon footprint of our distribution network.  Empowering our workforce These are powerful examples of how AI technology complements the work and day-to-day lives of our talented teams. Our guiding principle is that AI must work hand-in-hand with human ingenuity, enhancing productivity and freeing our employees to have more time to think critically and creatively. Starting my career in academia impressed upon me the importance of remaining curious. To me, curiosity is the birthplace of creativity, which is why it’s essential to me that our people remain curious and that we provide them with opportunities to develop their skills and careers. For these reasons, we make it a priority to foster a culture of continuous learning at PepsiCo, where everyone can thrive. > Our guiding principle is that AI must work hand-in-hand with human ingenuity, > enhancing productivity and freeing our employees to have more time to think > critically and creatively. The Act highlights the importance of AI literacy, reinforcing the need for organizations to equip their employees with the knowledge and skills to leverage AI effectively. PepsiCo is already driving AI literacy internally, ensuring that our teams are ready to work alongside AI systems safely and responsibly. At PepsiCo we’re ensuring our employees are fluent in data and understand how the technologies we’re implementing work for them. This means reimagining workplace training for greater impact: PepsiCo’s Digital Academy offers more than 50,000 learning modules, covering everything from machine learning to cloud computing. And of course, it also leverages AI to deliver personalized training courses and degrees based on everyone’s role and experience.  As we continue to integrate AI into PepsiCo’s digital transformation, we recognize that it comes with some risks and are committed to deploying AI ethically and transparently. Our Responsible AI Framework is a rigorous governance process that ensures our use of AI is deployed in a way that is ethical, equitable and transparent. This commitment aligns with the principles of the EU AI Act, which emphasizes responsible AI deployment, governance and workforce upskilling. > As we continue to integrate AI into PepsiCo’s digital transformation, we > recognize that it comes with some risks and are committed to deploying AI > ethically and transparently. Looking ahead I believe it’s vital that every business adopts a proactive approach to upskilling its workforce to ensure that no one is left behind. As I travel across Europe to meet our teams, partners and stakeholders, it is encouraging to see the shared vision of how democratizing AI is key to achieving our shared goals — whether feeding the world sustainably or driving down emissions. Athina Kanioura As we continue to scale AI across PepsiCo, I believe we’re setting an example that others can follow when it comes to private-sector investment in this critical form of technology. We are eager to collaborate with the Commission and other stakeholders to unlock solutions that are practical, scalable, innovative and transformative, driving lasting impact for the communities we serve. I invite you to reach out and work with us to ensure the EU leads in the AI revolution.

BRUSSELS — When the Netherlands’ Sicco Mansholt became Europe’s first agriculture commissioner back in 1958, the continent’s farmers faced a very different situation than they do today.  Officials in the postwar period were focused on guaranteeing food availability, boosting productivity with better fertilizers and pesticides, protecting farm incomes with fixed prices, and eating the difference to keep the cost of bread down for consumers. Mansholt’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) — created in 1962 — did all of that and more.  Yet by the end of his career, the Dutchman had come to understand the environmental and economic harms the CAP was wreaking. Soil degradation, water pollution and biodiversity loss were killing ecosystems, while production-based subsidies were spawning the infamous “wine lakes” and “butter mountains” of commodities to be destroyed or dumped on foreign markets. Since then, much has changed. But much has also remained the same.  The current CAP is the most climate-friendly ever, packed with eco-schemes and green rules. Yet it has still failed to tackle rising greenhouse gas emissions and species decline. The €55 billion-per-year package enriches billionaires and impoverishes smallholders. Farmers are old and their children want different lives, leaving migrants to work the fields for little pay. Amid this crisis, academics from Wageningen University — Europe’s top agricultural institution — presented their annual Mansholt Lecture last week, along with an 80-page report on the major dilemmas affecting European Union farming. Here are the four main takeaways: 1. AUTARKY IS POSSIBLE … This will be music to the ears of Europe’s politicians, who are increasingly fretting about food security. It’s mostly alarmism, of course, driven by farmer lobbies who claim environmental overregulation risks leading to empty supermarket shelves. In fact, Europe’s agri-food sector is pretty self-sufficient. Its dependency ratio — the share of imported food and inputs by value — is around 10 percent, well below tech and transport, according to the report. The bloc is a net exporter, pumping out staples like meat, dairy and cereals, and bringing in ancillary products like coffee, cacao and tropical fruit. The problem isn’t food availability, but affordability, which won’t be solved by more production. Rather, it requires tackling the overreliance on certain price-volatile inputs, namely animal feed, fertilizers and energy. Over 80 percent of our soybeans, a key feed for pigs, chickens and cows, comes from Brazil and Argentina. Of the three fertilizer types, 30 percent of our nitrogen relies on foreign fossil fuels. Over 60 percent of mined phosphate is Moroccan. And nearly 90 percent of mined potash is from Belarus and Russia. Brussels can partly reduce those dependencies, and indeed has been trying to do so. The upcoming EU Protein Strategy aims to ramp up soybean cultivation in Italy and France, while European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has promised a Clean Industrial Deal in the first 100 days of her second term that will, among other things, incentivize the production of green nitrogen to make nitrogen-based fertilizers. Ruminants like cows, sheep and goats require dozens of crop calories to make a meat calorie. | William West/Getty Images “The EU could produce enough food … to feed its population, provided the production of protein crops and oilseeds is increased,” said the report.  But there’s a catch.  2. … AS LONG AS WE EAT LESS MEAT Livestock populations are shrinking by a few percent a year. Yet unless they fall dramatically — as consumers shift to plant-based diets — there is simply not enough land in Europe to grow all their feed, the report concluded. Of all the plants produced in Europe — for food, feed, textiles, wood, biofuels and bioplastics — 60 percent go to raising farm animals.  “That bar is huge. And if you’re looking for room for maneuvering, maybe it’s there,” said Harriette Bos, senior researcher at Wageningen, during the lecture.  Ruminants like cows, sheep and goats require dozens of crop calories to make a meat calorie. Pigs are slightly more efficient, but they eat less grass than ruminants, meaning they are much more soy-intensive. Poultry is best, converting feed to flesh with far less waste. That means white meat consumption can stay stable, but red must decline fast.  “A shift to more sustainable consumption patterns is needed,” the report summarizes, noting that this is crucial on health and climate grounds as well. EU citizens on average eat 40 percent more protein than is recommended, significantly raising their risk of cardiovascular disease and various cancers. Meanwhile, animal farming accounts for 85 percent of EU agricultural emissions, which have proven difficult to cut in recent years. The industry’s political clout has bought it a near-total exemption from climate targets, with EU officials delaying or shelving key legislation on sustainable diets and agrochemicals after bloc-wide farmer protests. 3. DIET IS NOT JUST AN INDIVIDUAL CHOICE Last week, Christophe Hansen, the nominee for EU agriculture commissioner, argued that meat consumption is an individual choice that lawmakers shouldn’t get involved in. “I think it is very tricky to say and impose top-down who has to eat what,” he told lawmakers during his hearing before the European Parliament’s AGRI committee. Europe’s top agri-food experts don’t agree. “The hesitation to intervene in our food choices stands in stark contrast to the commonly accepted use of pricing strategies to reduce demand for [fossil] fuels, as well as tobacco and alcohol,” the Wageningen paper observes. “Interventions are needed to support consumer behavior toward more healthy and sustainable diets.” Action should be targeted and nonintrusive, of course, given that “public steering [of] consumer behavior” remains “a socially and politically delicate matter.” Meat taxes, as Germany is planning, could be sound in theory and yet prove politically toxic. Rebalancing subsidies is a more subtle alternative: Over 80 percent of the CAP, for example, supports animal agriculture.  So too are educational campaigns, proper labeling and “indirect strategies such as binding agreements” with manufacturers and retailers. Livestock populations are shrinking by a few percent a year. | Stringer/Getty Images 4. WE SHOULD CONSIDER DEINDUSTRIALIZING ANIMAL HUSBANDRY  Most of Europe’s meat now comes from factory farms, which leak chemicals into soils and rivers, heighten the spread of animal diseases and antibiotic resistance, and violate animal welfare. Feed production “will also continue to compete with the production of crops suitable for human consumption.” With that in mind, Wageningen’s researchers presented an “alternative vision for animal husbandry.” The plan involves much smaller herds raised in areas unsuitable for arable farming (like mountains) or close to zones with high waste streams (like processing, manufacturing or distribution facilities), to be fed on waste and “raw materials.” “In this more circular approach, the primary role of animals would be to convert these non-human food streams, with the number of animals in a region determined by the availability of these resources,” the report said.

BERLIN — Germans love their discounters. And the rest of the world seems to as well. That is, if you’re buying from them and not selling to them. Lidl operates nearly 9,000 stores outside its home market, while Aldi Süd and Aldi Nord have opened around 7,600 shops abroad, according to data from Heilbronn University showing that German discount supermarkets have expanded into 62 different countries. That stark expansion into foreign markets is, however, increasingly affecting suppliers and their sustainability efforts, as supermarkets like Aldi and Lidl use their growing market power to push down food prices. “Lidl and Aldi are known for being very aggressive on pricing,” said Stephan Rüschen, a food retail professor at the University of Heilbronn. “They have the market power to lower the price level in every country they go to.” That’s due to the success of their business model, which is based on running cost-effective shops — think simplistic stores without decoration where products sit in cardboard packaging instead of being neatly organized on shelves — combined with a focus on hard negotiations with suppliers. “Through price pressure and market power, they can determine who enters the German market and who does not,” said Steffen Vogel, a global supply chain expert from Oxfam. He added that Germany’s four big retailers have established a market concentration of 87 percent at home and thus hold a gatekeeping function.  “Ultimately, those entering the market are the ones that are prepared to accept dumping prices.” And while José Antonio Hidalgo, director of the Association of Ecuadorian Banana Exporters (AEBE), is used to German retailers squeezing prices, he described a recent campaign by Lidl — offering to buy bananas for less than €0.89 a kilogram — as the “straw that broke the camel’s back.” Alongside items such as Nutella and butter, bananas are seen as a strategic product that attracts customers and can draw them away from the competition.  Shoppers going into discount stores usually head straight to the fresh produce section, where they will find two varieties of banana piled up on the shelves — a cheaper option within easy reach and more expensive, but sustainable, alternatives nearby. “In the fruit and vegetable sector, bananas are the most important item,” said Rüschen, the food retail professor. “It’s the product with the highest turnover and one where customers are highly price-sensitive.” Alongside items such as Nutella and butter, bananas are seen as a strategic product that attracts customers and can draw them away from the competition. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images PRETEXT FOR EXPLOITATION Banana import prices in Germany declined by 20 percent between 2015 and 2018 and were below the 2008 price in 2021, according to an Oxfam report from that year.  “German banana buyers are the worst [with regard to price negotiations], because they know Germany is the most important European market for Ecuador,” said Jorge Acosta, who leads the banana workers’ union ASTAC, which represents around 3,500 laborers across Ecuador. Low prices “give companies a pretext to say that’s why we can’t respect the rights of workers,” said Acosta, who has received numerous death threats in his fight against worker exploitation in the banana sector. Suppliers, meanwhile, argue that extra burden is heaped on them by sustainability regulations, such as certification schemes or Germany’s due diligence act, which forces large companies to ensure their products do not contribute to labor or environmental violations. “[German discounters] say they are committed to sustainability … But prices have decreased, while requirements grow,” said AEBE’s Hidalgo. Exporters are looking for a single European Union fair trade mechanism that would guarantee higher prices from European supermarkets to cover extra sustainability costs. But according to Hidalgo, only Aldi Süd has agreed to such a scheme — while its competitors continue to push for cheaper fruit. Responding, Lidl said it “takes its responsibility toward the employees in the supply chain very seriously,” adding that if wage gaps on banana plantations are identified, these are closed by food vouchers or cash payments. Banana import prices in Germany declined by 20 percent between 2015 and 2018 and were below the 2008 price in 2021. | Georges Gobet/Images But such structures are, according to observers, far from watertight. “The wage data is often manipulated,” Oxfam’s Vogel said. While workers tend to be correctly paid according to their payslip, they often receive less after the transfer or must work more hours than officially stated, he added. Higher in-store prices do, however, not automatically guarantee better conditions. Germany’s more conventional supermarkets are performing even worse in terms of transparency and human rights when compared to the discounters, according to Oxfam’s 2022 supermarket check. Regardless of who offers a product, it is usually the weakest link in the supply chain that is first affected when prices get pushed down. “Small- and medium-sized banana producers can only export through large contracting companies,” said Acosta, the union leader. “And if they do so, they have to sell their products at miserable prices.” The number of small banana farms in Ecuador (up to 5 hectares) decreased from about 42,000 to just over than 16,000 between 2015 and 2018, while the number of businesses harvesting on more than 100 hectares of land grew, according to the country’s statistics office. Alessandro Ford contributed reporting.

BRUSSELS — When Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented the conclusions of her Strategic Dialogue on the Future of EU Agriculture last month, it looked like a PR coup. The seven-month forum on agri-food policy had calmed both riotous farmers and outraged NGOs, while yielding an apparently balanced report that she could loot for legislative ideas. Yet that success may be short-lived. Copa-Cogeca — Europe’s largest and most influential agricultural lobby — is hardening its position, POLITICO has learned. The group’s national members were outraged by some of the dialogue’s final recommendations, particularly the need to promote plant-based diets. After a raucous month in which members repeatedly blasted the Copa-Cogeca presidency — at a farm event in Hungary, in emails to its Brussels office and at the Copa presidium on Sept. 26 — the umbrella group wants to beef up its bargaining power at the European Board on Agri-Food (EBAF), the proposed successor to the Strategic Dialogue. “In the Strategic Dialogue, just five out of 29 participants were farmers,” Copa-Cogeca wrote in a Sept. 20 letter to the Commission, obtained by POLITICO. “At least half of the Board should be composed of participants representing the farming world, and Copa and Cogeca … should be granted a stronger presence in comparison to other actors.” The group also called for the inclusion of bodies representing “livestock and crops sectorial organisations, inputs [and] agriculture machinery,” as well as a shift from the fast-paced, confidential and person-to-person talks towards a slower, more transparent, and organization-based format.  “What we really need to focus on is making it work for farmers because that, from my point of view, was the initial objective of the dialogue: it was a reaction to farmers’ protest,” said Jan Doležal, the president of the Czech AKČR agrarian chamber. Looking forward, “we’ll work to improve our negotiation position,” he told POLITICO. That’s going to be a problem as von der Leyen seeks to convert the conclusions of the dialogue into a “Vision” for the future of EU agriculture — one of several action plans she has promised to deliver within 100 days of her new Commission being sworn in. The 29-stakeholder dialogue sought to overcome the extreme polarization of von der Leyen’s first term, encouraging compromise and trust between a motley crew of agricultural associations, food manufacturers and retailers, environmentalists, academics, and financiers. Participants mostly came alone, ate together, and shared stories about themselves and their families. Stacking the EBAF with farmers will likely be seen as a unilateral power grab, breaking the tentative cease-fire and tipping Europe’s agri-food sector into turbulence once more. Likewise, converting the nimble talks into rigid meetings, where envoys run every suggestion through their bulky membership lists, will kill the goose that laid the golden egg.  Factor in grumpy European lawmakers and capitals, both upset at being excluded from the process, and the results of von der Leyen’s unorthodox farm talks could end up having a short shelf life. MEXICAN STANDOFF IN BRUSSELS Since its announcement in January, the Strategic Dialogue had ticked along nicely. With its members sworn to secrecy, it was hard to gauge how things were going, but everyone seemed reasonably satisfied. There were no major leaks and participants praised the constructive atmosphere and optimistic outlooks.   By late August, negotiations had entered the final phase and people started to sweat. The dialogue’s conclusions were meant to be unanimous and Peter Strohschneider, the German historian who moderated the debate, began to apply pressure to reluctant delegates. He told one group of holdouts that he would keep on chairing meetings for as long as it took, recalled one participant. When Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented the conclusions of her Strategic Dialogue on the Future of EU Agriculture last month, it looked like a PR coup. | Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images When the 100-page report was published on Sept. 4, everyone scrambled to claim victory. NGOs trumpeted how it supported the EU’s recently-adopted nature restoration law. Consumer groups celebrated its food labeling and fair pricing sections. Young, organic and smallholder farmers highlighted the bits on reforming the EU farm budget, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Copa-Cogeca, the traditional behemoth of Brussels agri-food, struggled to sell it across the bloc though. “Really dangerous” is how Coldiretti, Italy’s largest farmer union, judged the recommendation for the CAP to prioritize smaller farmers. “I don’t like that at all,” said the head of the Dutch LTO on the need to decarbonize diets. Overall, the text “falls well short of expectations,” sniffed the president of the German Farmers’ Association (DBV). France’s FNSEA remained silent. Neither the organization nor its outspoken president, Arnaud Rousseau, posted a word about the report on its website or X account. That was despite the fact its former president is Christiane Lambert, one of the three Copa-Cogeca leaders who signed the conclusions and who uploaded a mass of posts about it on social media.  That week, most Copa member representatives were in Budapest for a farm conference. “This was our first chance to discuss it together,” said one participant, granted anonymity to speak freely. “There was unhappiness at part of it, particularly in relation to diets and consideration of alternative diets and plant proteins … anything essentially that would go against our position on livestock.” Two days after the report’s publication, four Copa members from the Visegrad countries — Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary — shot a highly critical letter at the secretariat. It demanded Copa-Cogeca retrospectively reject the report’s conclusions and withdraw from the Strategic Dialogue entirely.  “After 20 years of membership of the European Union and of the Copa-Cogeca family, we thought that our differences would be understood and safeguarded,” the four wrote in the letter obtained by POLITICO. “We expected the Copa-Cogeca Secretariat and Presidents to take a more cautious position and to insist on discussing the very sensitive and often controversial conclusions” with members, they complained: “The process was very non-transparent, especially in the last three days of the negotiations, when we had zero opportunity to intervene.” The group’s leadership tried to smooth things over. At the Copa presidium on Sept. 26, they assured unions the document was just a starting point. Some were assuaged. “I think people have accepted it with caveats, people are willing to move on,” said the participant present in Budapest.    Others were not. POLITICO spoke to one attendee who argued the lobby showed a lack of courage during the dialogue and its endorsement is not easily reversible. Von der Leyen wants the report to guide future legislation and has explicitly tasked her designated agriculture commissioner, Christophe Hansen, with following up on its proposals. WHAT HAPPENS NOW There’s disagreement over whether Copa-Cogeca could still withdraw from future talks. In a statement to POLITICO, the secretariat said that “the Strategic Dialogue is a report, not a legally binding agreement, so the question of a general withdrawal doesn’t apply.”  Both Doležal, the Czech farm boss, and the representative present in Budapest agreed with that idea, though for different reasons. Doležal, one of the four signatories of the Visegrad letter, told POLITICO that “I don’t think this will be on the table actually,” since Copa-Cogeca’s subsequent letter to the Commission has appeased him. The representative from Budapest was more pragmatic. “We’ve got a new secretary-general, Ellie Tsiforou: I don’t think it will be in her interests after her first couple of weeks … to announce that the farmers are” out, and risk immediately alienating von der Leyen, they reflected.  The dialogue’s conclusions were meant to be unanimous and Peter Strohschneider began to apply pressure to reluctant delegates. | Nicolas Tucat Not everyone got the memo though.  Any breach of the principle of consensus — such as signing a trade deal with South America or proposing a new pesticide reduction law — would mean trouble, warned José María Castilla, the head of Spain’s largest farmer union Asaja. “If [the EU] doesn’t comply with the agreement, we will be back on the streets,” he told POLITICO.