Sowing Fossil Dependence: How EU Farm Policy Turned Its Back on Sustainability – Center for International Environmental Law

Printed July 28, 2025

By Silvia Pastorelli, EU Petrochemicals Campaigner on the Middle for Worldwide Environmental Legislation, Silke Bollmohr, agrochemical and fossil fuels guide, and Livia Croset, agrochemical and fossil fuels guide. 

Throughout Europe, farmers are protesting. A vary of things, together with rising prices, low profitability, and unfair commerce competitors have made life more durable for many who feed the continent. The European Fee launched the Imaginative and prescient for Agriculture and Meals in February 2025, a coverage supposed to deal with farmers’ considerations and safe the way forward for European meals techniques.

However as an alternative of advancing actual options, the brand new technique marks a transparent retreat from the extra formidable Farm to Fork Technique of 2020. The place Farm to Fork sought to remodel meals manufacturing by means of sustainability and decreased reliance on artificial inputs, the brand new Imaginative and prescient prioritizes competitors, digitalization, and techno-fixes that reinforce the very fossil-based system it ought to be transferring away from.

A Step Backward

5 years in the past, the Farm to Fork Technique aimed to overtake Europe’s meals chain, from soil well being to diet, with a deal with decreasing waste, sustainable livestock farming, and agrochemical use. The technique had its limitations, however its built-in method signaled a shift towards a extra sustainable and resilient system. 

The Farm to Fork Technique units input-reduction targets that goal to scale back the use and threat of pesticides and using extra hazardous pesticides by 50 p.c, and goals to scale back using fertilizers by at the least 20 p.c by 2030. Preliminary developments had been promising: between 2020 and 2022, using NPK fertilizers within the EU dropped by roughly 13 p.c, and whereas hazardous pesticide use elevated barely, pesticide use and threat have decreased from 77 to 48 HRI 1 (Harmonised Danger Indicator 1), representing a couple of 38 p.c lower.

The EU Fee has since scrapped the Technique’s pesticide enter targets, and appears to have delayed its Built-in Nutrient Administration Motion Plan since 2023. As a substitute, it implicitly addresses enter use and nutrient administration by selling digital applied sciences and data-driven approaches reminiscent of precision farming and the Farm Sustainability Software for Vitamins with out attributing enter discount targets. 

Precision farming and different approaches, reminiscent of carbon farming, are proposed by the Imaginative and prescient as means to extend profitability and earnings, respectively. Precision farming goals to maximize crop yields and profitability. Nevertheless, some recommend that carbon farming does little to deal with the EU’s polluting agricultural sector, and the efficacy of its practices could also be overestimated as instruments of local weather change mitigation. These approaches have been criticized for tethering farmers to an industrial agricultural mannequin and shifting energy away from farmers and into agribusiness and the expertise business.

Defossilization vs. Decarbonization: Why It Issues

The distinction between decarbonization and defossilization is important. Decarbonization usually focuses on decreasing emissions and capturing and storing carbon after the actual fact. Defossilization means changing or reducing fossil fuels on the supply. The EU Imaginative and prescient centres decarbonization by selling carbon removing, farming, and storage, in addition to related carbon credit as a way to optimize further farmer earnings alternatives.

Specializing in decarbonization over defossilization could ultimately make house for false options reminiscent of blue ammonia. Ammonia is the important thing ingredient for nitrogen (N) fertilizers derived from fossil fuels, and blue ammonia is the place the fossil-based ammonia manufacturing course of is mixed with carbon seize and storage (CCS) expertise. Whereas branded as a cleaner different, blue ammonia entrenches the agricultural sector into fossil dependency and depends on CCS, a expertise that has overpromised and underdelivered. 

Inexperienced ammonia-based fertilizers, additionally promoted as a low-carbon different, fail to deal with many important problems with fossil-fuel-dependent agriculture. They alter how ammonia is made — by utilizing renewable power relatively than fossil fuels — however they don’t change the hurt brought on by its use and overuse, together with nitrous oxide emissions, and its contribution to land and aquatic biodiversity loss. Just below 60 p.c of fertilizer-related emissions come from discipline utility. Nitrous oxide — a greenhouse fuel with a warming potential 273 instances that of CO2 for a 100-year timescale — is launched as a results of fossil-based functions. Inexperienced ammonia can be expensive and dangers creating neo-colonial practices. In distinction, agroecological approaches can scale back reliance on artificial fertilizers and restore soil well being by means of pure processes like organic nitrogen fixation.

The Value of Fossil Dependence

Meals techniques are deeply entangled with fossil fuels. In 2020, the agri-food sector accounted for 31 p.c of complete EU emissions, but it stays one of many few sectors the place emissions haven’t meaningfully declined since 2005.

Artificial nitrogen fertilizer alone contributes to over 2 p.c of worldwide greenhouse fuel emissions. Some pesticides are greenhouse gases themselves. The International Warming Potential (GWP) of Sulfuryl fluoride, as an example, is as much as 5,000 instances larger than CO₂ over a 100-year time horizon.

Past local weather impacts, agrochemicals can degrade soils, pollute waterways, and hurt air high quality and biodiversity. They will additionally expose agricultural staff and communities to critical well being dangers. And since agrochemicals are straight linked to the supply and worth of fossil fuels, the sector is susceptible to geopolitical shocks, reminiscent of these triggered by Russia’s warfare on Ukraine.

In response, the EU has imposed sanctions and tariffs on Russian imports, pushing to diversify commerce and scale back power dependence. However the REPowerEU Roadmap, whereas aiming for power independence from Russia, didn’t handle the EU’s reliance on gas-intensive agricultural inputs with tariffs till this 12 months. 

Who Advantages?

The brand new Imaginative and prescient doesn’t serve farmers: it traps them in a cycle of expensive inputs and risky markets. Failing to confront fossil gasoline dependence head-on undermines each environmental and well being objectives. 

Farmers right this moment face rising prices, market instability, and worsening local weather circumstances that threaten their harvests and, due to this fact, their earnings. But the Imaginative and prescient provides no actual assist for transitioning to sustainable practices or decreasing dependency on costly, environmentally dangerous inputs. As a substitute, it rewards speculative decarbonization practices and promotes applied sciences and data-driven approaches that profit large agribusinesses, not small farms.

Agroecology, regenerative farming, and localized meals techniques provide a path ahead; one which reduces fossil fuels and emissions, improves soil well being, and strengthens meals sovereignty. However these approaches require funding, coaching, and coverage frameworks that prioritize individuals and planet over revenue.

A Crossroads for EU Agriculture

Because the EU prepares the efficiency overview on the Widespread Agricultural Coverage in 2027, there’s nonetheless time to course-correct. Actual transformation should heart enter discount, ecological practices, and outcome-based indicators, not effectivity metrics that prop up an unsustainable established order.

The present Imaginative and prescient for Agriculture and Meals represents a missed alternative. If the EU needs to fulfill its local weather commitments and restore belief amongst farmers, it should transfer past techno-fixes and embrace a very sustainable, equitable, and fossil-free future for meals.