A conversation with...Frans Timmermans, EVP European Commission & Thierry Krier, CEMA President

My pleasure.

Well, we are now in the middle of negotiating with the Parliament and Council the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy. The CAP is going to be essential to move ahead with the reforms needed in the agricultural sector. I hope we can come to an agreement, especially on making it possible to work with so-called eco-schemes that would facilitate the agricultural sector to move towards more sustainable ways of production. If I go back to the origins of the CAP, it wanted to achieve basically three things. First, that the European Union would be able to feed itself. Second, that food would be available at acceptable prices for everyone in Europe. And third, that we would do something about the rampant poverty in rural areas of Europe, so guarantee decent income for farmers. The CAP for a long time has been able to achieve these goals, especially feeding Europe with very high quality food at very modest prices. The one element where we're struggling, and this has been going on for quite some time, is to guarantee decent incomes for all our farmers. Now, if we continue with the intensification of our agriculture the way we've been doing it over the last decades, we will go way beyond the natural boundaries our planet is giving us. So we need to learn to produce good quality, affordable food for up to 10 billion people on Earth, while staying within the planet's boundaries. That is the big challenge. It's a huge challenge, but it is feasible — if we are successful in ecological agriculture, if we protect and promote biodiversity, if we can do agriculture with less pesticides, less fertilizers, less medication in animal husbandry, and if we inform our consumers better on which food products are good for them. Farm to Fork is about offering a sustainable future for our farming communities across the European Union, offering good quality, healthy food to better-informed citizens, all within planetary boundaries. I will be the first to admit it's an incredibly complicated and huge challenge, but it's also unavoidable, because if we don't do this, planetary boundaries will impose themselves. Droughts, wildfires, floods will get out of control, and the first victims will be our farming communities across the European Union.

I can't stress enough how critical your contribution to the success of the new CAP and the Farm to Fork strategy is. We need you and all the expertise you have. As you say, if we want to feed up to 10 billion people and stay within planetary boundaries, we have to introduce the highest level of technology available, even develop new technologies, so that even the smallest farmer has access to high tech. That's the only way you can organize precision farming, up to pixel farming I would even say — huge yields on very small spaces with a very rational use of water and fertilizers. But it has to be accessible to the whole farming community, not only those with huge scale. I think the importance for all of us — for you, for us at the European Commission, for national authorities, and for farming organizations — is that we lower the threshold of the uptake of high-tech in farming. How can we contribute to that? We need to bring broadband everywhere in rural Europe, absolutely everywhere. We also need to bring farming closer to cities, or even within cities, with new technologies. We need the best possible logistics infrastructure so food gets to people more efficiently. We also need to make sure high tech is low threshold — every single farmer knows how to operate it without needing five university degrees. The beauty of modern technology is that it is high-tech and low threshold, and it has to go everywhere in farming communities, so every farmer knows exactly when to use water, when to use the minimum amount of fertilizer, when to sow seeds, when to harvest. For that you need machinery, the contribution of your sector, inventions in your sector. We at the European Commission would like to stimulate that through research, working with a network of the highest research facilities in agriculture. I'm from the Netherlands, we have some experience in this area. This is where the future lies, and it's what young people in farming communities are looking for. One of the problems is that families worry their children will no longer want to be farmers. With these new technologies, we can offer them a vision of a sustainable future — not working 20 hours a day for very low income, having holidays like everybody else, having different roles as custodians of the natural environment, being shepherds of nature and being rewarded for that. If we can convince people that farming becoming more high-tech is not dissociating ourselves from nature but bringing us closer to it, using the incredible resources of nature in a more rational way.

Let me be very clear: this is not going to be easy. This is a fundamental transformation, and like any fundamental transformation, it comes with risks. Farm to Fork will come with risks. But you have to compare that to the consequences of doing nothing. The risks of doing nothing for farming communities are way, way bigger than the risks of trying to rebalance our relationship with our natural environment. You already see the devastating effects of droughts. If we do not limit the rise of temperature to 1.5, maximum 2 degrees, these things will get out of control — droughts, wildfires, erratic storms devastating crops, increased pandemic risks from zoonosis. We are going to change, and that is full of risks. But not changing has even more risks. Change is the only way forward. Where do we concentrate? Let's start with the income of farmers, because that was the beginning of the CAP 50 years ago. The only way to convince the farming community to embrace change is to guarantee them a decent income, perhaps not only through food production but also as custodians of the natural environment. The societal role played by the agricultural community warrants protection of their income and a guarantee of their socio-economic position. Start with that as a central and pivotal point, then look at other issues: how much production does Europe need, how extensive can it be, what does it mean for technologies, fertilizers, and pesticides. Look at food quality and fair pricing of food. Many food products have reached price levels that make it very difficult for families to live on the revenue of food production. Food has become very, very cheap, but increasing food prices also has huge socio-economic effects on people who don't have much to spend. Look at fiscal policies — can you reduce taxation on food, make food easily accessible? Look at the whole chain of production, from farm to fork, and make sure those who produce the food get a fair price. My main message today is this: we need to be brutally honest with each other. This is a fundamental transformation we need to embrace to come out better on the other side. If we do not learn to live within the boundaries Mother Earth is giving us, there will be so much friction that it will lead to violent conflict — fighting over water, over arable land. The risk of violent conflict and huge migrational consequences across the world will be huge. Let's not underestimate the threats and let's see the opportunities the new CAP and Farm to Fork policy can deliver. We can make farming more resilient, farming communities more resilient, and offer a future that young farmers want to embrace: more sustainable production within the limits of our natural environment, with the support of a European population that wants us to be more sustainable and is extremely worried by the climate and biodiversity crises.

It was my pleasure. Thank you very much.