The Future of Food and Farming.

The purpose of this policy is to outline the future direction and objectives of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in the European Union in order to maintain the access of European citizens to safe, high quality, affordable, nutritious and diverse food. It provides an overview of the challenges and opportunities facing the agricultural sector and rural areas, and proposes measures in a new economic, climate, environmental, social, technological, industrial and political context to address them. The policy emphasizes the need for a more sustainable, market-oriented, and simplified CAP that supports the economic, environmental, and social well-being of farmers and rural communities.
The agricultural sector and the EU rural areas will be better linked to human capital development and research and support for innovation. The main objectives of the future CAP are: (I) to promote a smart and resilient agricultural sector; (II) to support environmental care and climate action and to contribute to the environmental and climate objectives of the EU; and (III) to develop rural areas in terms of socio-economic context. The policy also highlights the importance of research, innovation, investment, the circular economy and the bioeconomy, climate change adaptation, the digitalization, and migration in achieving the objectives of the future CAP.
Fostering smart agriculture will lead to increased production, real-time access to data and production information, better quality and nutritional values, improved livestock health, lower water consumption, lower production costs, accurate farm and field evaluations, and reduced environment, energy and climate footprint. This policy sets out measures to ensure smart and resilient agricultural sector, such as: providing fair income support to help farmers to make a living; investing to improve farmers' market reward; and developing an appropriate framework for risk management.
Resource efficiency, environmental care and climate action will be bolstered in accordance with the EU environmental and climate objectives to secure agricultural and forestry practices and production and food security. Climate-smart farming will be supported by training, advice and innovation. The delivery of public goods and ecosystems services related to soil, water, biodiversity, air quality, climate action will be protected through strong commitments in the agricultural policies. The granting of income support to farmers will be conditioned to their undertaking of environmental and climate practices.
Good growth and job potential will be offered to farmers and foresters through new rural value chains such as clean energy, the emerging bioeconomy, the circular economy, and ecotourism. Joint EU and national investment in human capital development in rural areas will be continued to promote social inclusion, poverty reduction and job creation in the local economy. Young farmers will be encouraged for starting up farming activity to make the sector more dynamic and open to on-going technological transformations. Access to financial instruments to support farm investments and working capital will be facilitated and better adapted to the investment needs and higher risk profiles of new entrants.
The policy stresses on the need to address citizens' expectations regarding sustainable food production, in particular concerning health, nutrition, food waste, food safety, food quality, and environmental and animal welfare. One Health approach will be implemented with regard to human and animal health, with an emphasis on antimicrobial resistance. Healthy dietary practices will be promoted and the consumption of fruit and vegetables will be increased through campaigns, such as school feeding schemes. Food waste and food losses will be reduced by stimulating better production and processing practices and by supporting initiatives that transform traditional produce-use-discard consumption patterns into a circular bioeconomy.
Additionally, this policy underlines the global dimension of the CAP and thus it should promote trade and address the root causes of migration. The CAP aims to maintain the market-orientation of the EU agri-food sector and promote open trade to improve the accessibility, variety and affordability of food, while also addressing the sensitivity of certain agricultural sectors and addressing unjustified sanitary and phytosanitary barriers. The cooperation with EU partner countries and regions will be increased, in particular when facing new and emerging animal health and phytosanitary threats.