Does the new EU food and farming strategy have the bite it needs to succeed?

The EU unveiled its new agriculture and food strategy, the EU Vision for Agriculture and Food, on February 19, 2025, setting the direction for the next five years of policymaking.

Amidst a challenging geopolitical context and following months of farmers’ protests across European streets, the European Commission has delineated a strategy built around the need for competitiveness, resilience and profitability of EU farming and food. Recognising the strategic role of the agrifood sector for the EU, the Vision focuses on key themes of this EU mandate – competitiveness and simplification – with a special focus on primary production.

Unlike its predecessor, the Farm to Fork (F2F) strategy – i.e. the Agrifood branch of the Green Deal, which aimed at a paradigm shift for sustainable food systems, the new approach recalibrates toward resilient and competitive production. F2F positioned the EU as a leader in sustainable agrifood policy but faced criticism for neglecting farmers’ economic constraints. Now in this new Vision, sustainability is framed within a broader focus on competitiveness and simplification, which will take priority in shaping the agrifood sector’s contribution to EU climate targets.

This shift also underscores the EU’s attempt to respond to geopolitical fragmentation and supply chain vulnerabilities. Geopolitical tensions, particularly those stemming from the war in Ukraine, have underscored Europe’s dependency on trade partners for critical agricultural inputs, from fertilisers to plant-based proteins. Consequently, the EU’s new Vision is looking to fill potential gaps on food sovereignty, resilience, and strategic autonomy.

A Vision for Agriculture, but what about the rest of the value chain?

The Vision emerges amid geopolitical volatility, where agriculture is especially exposed to retaliation, and needs to reassure that EU farmers will not be the ones bearing the brunt of the new tense international landscape. Consequently, the EU Executive is providing a politically charged Vision that focuses heavily on ensuring farmers’ profitability and international competitiveness, mainly by simplifying requirements and funding for farmers, looking to put safeguards in place vis-à-vis trading practices reinforcing the primary production’s bargaining power, and increasing the attractiveness of the profession through a generational renewal strategy for the EU farming community.

However, its focus on primary producers leaves the broader food sector without certainty or policy predictability. Significant gaps remain in acknowledging and addressing the challenges of the middle part of the agrifood and beverage value chain, as the Vision fails to acknowledge the challenges faced by for instance the processors or retailers. The policy direction for the entire sector remains therefore unanswered. In this way, the absence of targeted measures raises questions about the future of Europe’s food and drink industry, one of the bloc’s largest manufacturing sectors.

A tougher stance on trade

The Vision also presents a tougher stance on trade, pledging to enforce stricter import standards, strengthen EU export promotion and trade reciprocity, and create a Union Safety Net to respond to unilateral actions targeting the EU agrifood sector.

European stringent environmental and safety standards have long been a point of contention in global trade negotiations. However, this policy shift carries significant trade implications. While aiming to ensure food sovereignly without resorting to outright protectionism, these measures may still trigger at least similar safeguards from trade partners. Now, with rising economic nationalism and trade protectionism among key partners, it remains to be seen how those standards may be seen and how it may affect future trade negotiations.

Moreover, the Vision promises increased trade diversification, an objective difficult to reconcile with the strong internal tension in the EU between liberalising trade and protecting farmers. With much domestic opposition from the agricultural sector to the recently concluded Mercosur trade agreement, it is difficult to see where the balance will be struck between competing EU objectives (competitiveness, food security, trade openness, green transition) and who will ultimately have to pay the price.

A sustainable agrifood sector as long as profitability remains intact

Contrary to the F2F but in line with the narrative of the new Commission, the Vision shifts sustainability from the overarching narrative to one goal within a broader framework that prioritises competitiveness and resilience. But while economic and structural concerns seem to be taking precedence, key sustainability themes like water resilience, emissions reduction, soil health and biodiversity remain prominent.

Ensuring food security and farmers’ profitability is now viewed as a prerequisite for advancing sustainability, as without financial stability and market incentives, farmers may struggle to implement green practices amid rising input costs and global trade pressures. However, this raises many concerns, in primis whether funding will be provided to ensure a just transition, as the burden of climate mitigation and adaptation falls unevenly across different actors in the value chain.

In conclusion, while the Vision provides clarity on the direction of travel and emphasises support for the EU food and farming sector in an increasingly volatile and unpredictable global marketplace we will have to wait and see how it will reconcile all the competing demands that remain on the sector in practice.