Europe North to South: food system challenges and solutions

Brussels & online, 10 April 2024

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The policies affecting food systems in Europe have been largely developed in isolation over the last 60 years. However, every actor and sector in the food system is inextricably linked. From agriculture to trade, marketing, retail, food safety, environment, development, research, education, fiscal and social policies, market regulation, competition, the different elements and dynamics making up our food system come into contact and influence each other. As such, the current Commission recognised early on that we need to change our food policy landscape to ensure we overcome policy incoherence and seize the opportunities offered by synergies across the value chain. Such an approach, built on improved dialogue to overcome polarisations, offers the chance to ensure our food system provides sustainable livelihoods for farmers, nurtures consumers, and contributes to restoring our ecosystems.

Together with our members AirClim, from Sweden, and Ecologistas en Acción, from Spain, the EEB has organised a high-level event to explore examples of case studies throughout Europe and across the value chain, which illustrate some of the most evident impacts on social and environmental sustainability of our current food system. It will consider which concrete measures are already being adopted by many actors to ensure those impacts are positive, and how taking a food systems approach at the EU level can support meaningful and inclusive change.

This EU-wide perspective that does not fail to consider regional and local realities will allow us to showcase how deeply interconnected different sectors and regions are, and how constructive solutions at one level can reverberate positively to others – precisely because of the interconnectedness of our food system.

Venue: Brussels Info Place, Rue Royale 2/4, 1000 Bruxelles

Agenda

Moderated by Natasha Foote, EU agri-food journalist and moderator

14:00 – 14:30:   Welcome coffee

14:30 – 14:40:   Introduction 

14:40 – 15:00:   Keynote speaker | Tomaso Ferrando, Research Professor, Faculty of Law and Institute of Development Policy (IOB), University of Antwerp

15:00 – 15:45:   Session 1 | The True Price of Food: The Hidden Face of Agribusiness by Ecologistas en Acción (Spain). Info: The project takes a multi-region and systemic perspective to analysing how production systems in Southern regions of the EU are disrupting ecosystems and communities to provide produce to countries in the North of the continent. Overcoming these negative interdependencies requires imagining and creating alternative systems of production and consumption, geared towards long term sustainability and resilience.

15:45 – 16:05:   Coffee break

16:05 – 16:50:   Session 2 | Food for Thought – Sustainable Food Systems in the Baltic Region by AirClim (Sweden). Info: Presentation of initiatives addressing sustainability issues of the agri-food sector in the Baltic region and at different levels of the food value chain, with a consideration of how policies have affected the system and how they can adapt to tackle the growing environmental and social sustainability issues defining it.

16:50 – 17:10:   Panel discussion

17:10 – 17:20:   Closing remarks | Faustine Bas-Defossez, Director for Nature, Health and Environment at the European Environmental Bureau

17:20 – 19:00:   Reception with dinner