Sleepwalking to failure?

INDUSTRY VIEWPOINT

Sleepwalking to failure?

One year on from the launch of its Farm to Fork Strategy, the European Commission is still failing Europe’s farmers, says Igor Shmidt, EuroChem Group’s head of public affairs.

The European Commission is sleepwalking towards a sustainable-farming failure.

Unless the Commission revises its Farm to Fork Strategy, launched in May last year, by offering farmers real incentives to adopt smart fertilization practices, it will have no hope of achieving its stated goal of reducing agriculture’s impact on the environment. The slow pace of Common Agricultural Policy reform has made the need for progress even more urgent.

The much-trumpeted Farm to Fork Strategy will be a dead end for Europe’s agricultural sector if it continues on its current path. All hopes are pinned on the willingness of Member States to pass the Commission’s vague and uncertain recommendations on mitigating nutrient losses into national laws. This is a fundamental flaw.

Reliable information on nutrient losses

Mitigating nutrient losses is a noble and valid goal – one that the large majority of Europe’s farmers support, as it would mean reducing the inefficiencies of existing fertilizers. Maximising the amount of nutrients taken up by plants, while reducing the amount that escapes into the water table or into the air, clearly benefits both farmers and the environment.

Nevertheless, the interplay between fertilizer uptake and environmental escape is hugely complicated – varying significantly between different landscapes, soil types, ecosystems and agricultural production systems. Because of this, only a few EU Member States are reliably measuring their nutrient losses at present. These include countries such as France, Italy, and Germany which also farm the most efficiently.

If the European Commission wishes to pass EU-wide legislation to reduce nutrient losses, while at the same time maintaining the economic viability of Europe’s agricultural sector, these proposals need to be backed by reliable information. Specifically, the Commission must undertake detailed data gathering studies. These are required to determine the appropriate and exact level of nutrient loss reduction for each Member State. It also needs to come forward with solutions for achieving this objective and agree to provide the necessary support.

Avoiding negative economic impacts

Regrettably, the European Commission has shied away from presenting its own comprehensive impact assessment of the Farm to Fork Strategy, while being critical of other institutions, such as the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), that have willingly undertaken such studies. Worryingly, the USDA study found that the European Commission’s proposals will result in severe negative economic impacts.

As things stand, the European Commission is conveniently washing its hands of any responsibility for gathering baseline data or providing farmers with practical solutions. Instead, current plans to provide Member States with a set of vague recommendations will have perverse and unfortunate consequences. The Commission is, in effect, punishing those farmers wishing to achieve high levels of nutrient use efficiency, while giving free rein to those unwilling to take action to avoid over-fertilization. After one year of intense debate, Europe’s farmers still have more questions than answers about the Farm to Fork Strategy.

The need for leadership and action

The European Commission is still able to bring about real change for every one of the bloc’s 10 million farmers – if it acts now with leadership and certainty to address nutrient losses. An appropriate first step would be to work with farmers to identify and promote smart farming practices, including the use of enhanced efficiency fertilizers (EEFs) with financial incentives to boost their adoption. This would garner significant support from the farming community.

Two specific actions that would make many of the farmers we work with change their behaviour tomorrow are:

1. Undertake a comprehensive impact assessment of the entire Strategy, as previously promised by the European Commission. This would allow Europe’s farmers to gain a much better understanding of how they will be affected by the Strategy – so enabling them to begin adapting their operations to mitigate any potential downsides.

2. Implement a financial incentives programme for farmers to boost their use of enhanced efficiency fertilizers (EEFs). This would help meet the Strategy’s objectives and be informed by the impact assessment. Farmers could, for example, be encouraged to purchase EEFs by slashing VAT on these products. Additionally, the Commission could rewards farmers with climate credits under carbon farming programmes to encourage the uptake of inhibitors or other smart fertilization technologies.

Still time to wake up

The European Commission has already shown its willingness to listen to the concerns of Europe’s farming community by changing some of the original proposals in the Farm to Fork Strategy. For example, we applaud its decision to drop the blanket proposal for a fixed quantitative reduction in fertilizer use. Almost inevitably, this would have led to the conversion of pristine land into arable land to maintain food supply levels.

We are simply asking the European Commission to show the same flexibility and dynamism on the issue of nutrient losses and fertilizer efficiency. The fertilizer industry is willing to work collaboratively with the Commission to develop an informed, balanced and wholly practical approach – delivering policies that address climate concerns and benefit Europe’s farming communities.

By being alert to the solutions already on the table – as well as being agile enough to adopt them – the European Commission still has time to awake from its somnambulism and steer European agriculture towards a sustainable future.