The Geopolitics of Food: How Agrifood is Reshaping Trade Policy

From tractor blockades to demonstrations in the EU quarter, the message from European farmers is clear: they feel squeezed by rising costs, stringent regulations, and what they see as an uneven playing field with global competitors.

This comes as global agrifood trade shows clear signs of growing fragmentation and geopolitical tension. Since 2022, over 30 countries have imposed export restrictions on key food commodities. At peak moments, these measures have affected up to one-fifth of globally traded calories. Meanwhile, supply chains are increasingly exposed to geopolitical disruptions, from China’s export restrictions to tensions around key transit routes like the Strait of Hormuz.

For the EU, this creates a structural dilemma. Europe remains deeply integrated into global trade flows, with exports of around €240 billion and a €50 billion surplus in 2025, but this coexists with significant strategic dependencies. For instance, the EU still imports around 75% of its high-protein feed and sources 25–30% of its fertiliser supply from Russia alone.

This raises a fundamental question: should Europe continue defending open trade in an increasingly unstable world, or adapt to a global environment where protectionism is becoming the norm?

The EU has so far tried to balance these competing imperatives, but the cracks in this approach are increasingly showing.

Domestic measures: from openness to conditionality

A series of initiatives, ranging from stricter import rules and revisions of Maximum Residue Limit (MRL) rules under the Food Safety Omnibus, to equivalence agreements under Organics Regulations, point towards maintaining openness, but under stricter conditions for reciprocity.

The underlying logic is politically compelling. European producers are subject to some of the world’s highest environmental and food safety standards; imported products, therefore, should meet comparable requirements. This has steadily gained support among Member States and the European Parliament, where concerns about competitiveness and fairness intensify.

Yet, translating this principle into practice is far more complicated. Under WTO rules, distinguishing legitimate public policy objectives from disguised trade restrictions is not straightforward, and enforcing equivalence across different regulatory systems remains challenging. If applied too rigidly, reciprocity requirements could trigger disputes with trading partners, complicate market access for EU exporters, and ultimately deepen fragmentation.

At the same time, Brussels is also seeking to strengthen promotion of its agrifood sector, both internally and abroad, by positioning quality, sustainability and traceability as competitive advantages. But this dual strategy – promoting exports while tightening import conditions – creates tensions with trading partners who see market access becoming increasingly restricted.

“The industry is not opposed to standards. But standards should emerge through multilateral dialogue, not unilateral mandates. One party imposing standards unilaterally and expecting universal compliance is a recipe for resentment and retaliation.” – Alice O’Donovan, Secretary General, CELCAA

Trade negotiations: pragmatism over liberalisation

That same tension shapes the EU’s external negotiations. Agrifood has long been the most politically sensitive, and often limiting, component of deals with third countries.

This evolution has been building for years. Political backlash during negotiations with Canada  revealed how contentious agricultural market access had become, but this has now evolved into a structural feature of EU trade policy. Safeguards protecting sensitive sectors are now standard, while tariff liberalisation for agrifood products is increasingly constrained and contested.

However, agreements are still pursued and concluded, albeit with a lower level of tariff elimination. The logic is increasingly strategic: in a fragmented global economy, the cost of not securing trade deals is simply too high. Recent negotiations with Mercosur, Australia and India illustrate this shift. All three were shaped and often stalled by tensions over agricultural standards and safeguards. Their eventual conclusion, however, reflects less a revival of liberalisation than a pragmatic response to geopolitical pressures, including EU-US trade tensions.

At the same time, agrifood itself is increasingly exposed to geopolitical retaliation. High-value European exports have become recurring targets in disputes, demonstrating how agricultural products are now routinely used as visible and politically effective instruments of pressure.

This creates a self-reinforcing dynamic: external pressures fuel domestic demands for protection, and domestic sensitivities constrain external ambition. As a result, trade agreements have become both more necessary and more constrained.

Multilateral dynamics: stalled progress at the WTO

The multilateral picture is even more sclerotic. Agriculture remains one of the most entrenched deadlocks at the WTO, and the latest Ministerial Conference once again failed to deliver substantive outcomes on domestic support, public stockholding or market access.

Since the creation of the WTO, developing countries have argued that agricultural trade rules disproportionately reflect the interests of advanced economies, while major economies (including the EU) seek to preserve policy space for domestic support. The Doha Development Agenda, launched in 2001 to rebalance global trade rules, has effectively stalled for over two decades, reflecting unresolved conflicts over subsidies, market access, and policy space.

This has pushed the EU towards instruments it can control more directly, i.e. bilateral agreements and unilateral tools such as the Generalised Scheme of Preferences, reinforcing rather than solving the tension between openness and protection.

Agriculture as a bargaining chip

As global pressures converge, agriculture has evolved far beyond a traditional market-access issue. Faced with mounting uncertainty, the EU’s response has become progressively more inward-looking. Under pressure from farmers and growing concerns over strategic vulnerabilities, Brussels is doubling down on protection, while alternative approaches – whether structural competitiveness and climate change mitigation reforms, or a renewed push for liberalisation – remain largely absent from the debate.

But is this the right response to rising global uncertainty, or does it risk addressing symptoms rather than causes? A more defensive posture may offer short-term political stability, but it could also limit access to essential inputs and weaken export opportunities over time.

“There is a real tension at the heart of this debate. Europe relies on open trade to safeguard food security, support its agri-food exports and secure access to essential inputs, yet it is simultaneously moving towards more restrictive approaches on imports. The response should not be to turn agri-food trade into a bargaining tool. Measures on maximum residue levels (MRLs) and production standards must remain science-based, practical and WTO-compatible. Otherwise, we risk creating greater complexity, undermining competitiveness and resilience, without addressing the underlying challenges.” – Olivier de Matos, Director General, CropLife Europe

For now, this may be the only politically viable path, but it comes with a key trade-off: agrifood has been and continues to be used as a bargaining chip rather than an objective in its own right, a strategic lever to weaponise, or an offer to achieve other, more pressing, needs.