Environmental footprint, policy priorities and the road ahead

Day 2 of the Forum for the Future of Agriculture 2025 Market Outlook workshop built on Day 1 by examining the environmental and policy implications of the newest OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook, covering 2025-2034. Day 1 had assessed the Outlook, exploring what it means for agricultural markets, sustainability and policy in the decade ahead.

Opening

Opening the session, Mark Titterington, Member of the ForumforAg Advisory Council, outlined the need to reconcile sustainability objectives with productivity and competitiveness, “a challenge for all of us who care where the agri-food system is going.”

The sense of caring for the planet came through strongly in the opening address from Cédric du Monceau, Member of the Committee of the Regions, who combined emotion and hard reality. Life on earth is resilient but fragile, and population and consumption trends together create “a dangerous exponential” pressure on the planet. “We need more cooperation than competition, because we will not survive if we don’t cooperate,” he said.

He advocated for a more human way of measuring impacts and outcomes, using “footprint” rather than “GDP”: footprints allow us to see and summarize our problems, whereas GDP measures only money. Fiscal levers are still important, because “we don’t value nature sufficiently”. “It’s hard to have the heart and the brain work together, but when they do work, you make miracles.”

Asked by Mark how to get people to move away from the reliance on GDP, Mr du Monceau cited other indices, such as the Human Development Index (HDI), and externalities, such as numbers of suicides in a country. While politicians are trapped in a complex system, social and political trends show that the people “left on the side of the road” are demanding change and there has to be a revolution in political structures.

Tassos Haniotis, Special Advisor for Sustainable Productivity at the ForumforAg Agriculture and Senior Guest Research Scholar at IIASA, revisited the theme of day one – “the new world disorder” – under three specific areas, trade, science and climate.

On trade, he was cautiously optimistic: despite the breakdown of established rules, open markets can still help in balancing food surpluses and deficits across regions through reciprocity. He was deeply concerned about declining trust in evidence, particularly challenges to proven science as in the case of vaccines and the impact of climate change in agriculture. “That’s important because agriculture is the only sector that has the capacity to emit and sequester at the same time.”

Mr Haniotis linked climate action to food prices and a need to see the issues differently: “My view has always been that the way to reduce the cost of food is actually by increasing sustainable productivity… there is plenty of evidence out there that we can do it through the full spectrum of practices.” This needs to be linked to policy design, which is where the path of food prices becomes important. “We cannot ask the average citizen to contribute more on food and more on energy to address climate change and expect that there isn’t going to be a reaction. Ignoring this reality has led to real political disasters”.

Session 1 – The environmental footprint of the Outlook

The second part of the workshop, again moderated by Mark, opened with two presentations, and broadened into a panel discussion.

Impact of different mitigation technologies

Ana Luisa Barbosa, Spatial Data Scientist at the Joint Research Centre, made the first presentation, grounding her talk in the EU’s commitment to reach climate neutrality by 2050. Agriculture, forestry and land-use change (AFOLU) sit at the heart of that challenge because “they can both sequester carbon and reduce the emission of greenhouse gases”.

She explored what happens to agricultural markets if the food value chain implements different mitigation technologies, based on the latest study in the EcAMPA (Economic assessment of GHG mitigation policy options for EU agriculture) series. This study looks into the AFOLU sector’s potential contribution to EU climate neutrality, and considers a number of scenarios:

• Afforestation, expanding forest area
• Forest management improvements, reducing harvesting
• Histosol protection, setting aside organic soils and peatlands
• Carbon pricing, taxing agricultural emissions and subsidising removals
• A combined scenario, layering technologies and land-use measures

Protecting histosols alone delivers the maximum potential for emissions savings, with “barely an impact on food production,” she said. Farmers are also likely to adopt histosol protection voluntarily when it is cost-effective.

By contrast, carbon pricing produces the strongest effect on both emissions and sequestration, but it comes with very visible trade-offs: a significant drop in livestock production, especially beef, and rising consumer prices that push diets toward poultry, pork and plant-based proteins. Crop production also shifts, with oilseeds, particularly rapeseed, facing a moderate decline under a high carbon price. Forest area expands, mainly at the expense of grassland. And because less grassland means pressure on livestock feed, farmers may replace part of the grass-based feed by cereal-based feeds, creating ripple effects in the cereals market.

Her conclusion was clear and pragmatic: by 2050, the AFOLU sector can cut emissions by 29% and boost sequestration by 87%. “Mitigation technologies help, but land-use management plays a big role.”

A multi-model view of uncertainty

Tamas Krisztin, Senior Research Scholar at IIASA, presented a different lens: what happens when different models are used to analyze harmonised data and trends, with a goal of improving analytical tools for EU agri-food policy support?

He showed how the Outlook’s projected trends sit roughly in the middle of a wide band of results produced by multiple global and EU models. “The idea,” he explained, “is to align on GDP, population and productivity drivers, feed them into different tools, and see how much uncertainty there is.”

In some areas, models cluster closely, such as in emissions trends in the EU. In others, such as global cropland demand, they diverge noticeably. Mr Krisztin also introduced results from using a climate-shock stress test with a high-emissions scenario, showing variable results in areas such as crop yields, cropland requirements, imports and exports. The real need is to understand uncertainty, not just single trajectories, he said.

He closed by highlighting that new Horizon Europe projects are developing integrated assessments that combine economic, land-use, biodiversity and climate perspectives, and exploring how investments in the bioeconomy, digital agriculture and nutrient management could unlock resilience and growth.

Panel reflections: trade-offs, time horizons and political realities

Erik Mathijs, Director, SFERE, KU Leuven, picked up immediately on unintended consequences. “What about biodiversity? What about water retention?” he asked. Focusing solely on greenhouse gases risks missing other impacts. He urged policymakers and modellers to use “bundled approaches,” looking for synergies rather than optimising a single metric.

He also highlighted the need for trade-offs in transition pathways: chemistry-based solutions often deliver fast results but come with environmental costs; nature-based solutions are much slower, requiring patient capital and policy frameworks that give farmers time. Modelling, he said, should reflect different time horizons and investment cycles. On a positive note, he saw a trend for businesses to consider implications more widely and shift their mindset from investing for CSR purposes, to investing to make their supply chains more resilient.

On biomass, he asked a simple but pointed question: “If we want more biomass in the soil, where does it have to come from?” Southern Europe, for example, cannot simply shift biomass from other regions. Material balance matters. Both modellers agreed that biomass flows should be integrated.

Edward Davey, head of the World Resources Institute Europe, U.K. Office, highlighted the “disconnect” between the scale of the emissions reductions needed, and the politics and narratives of transition. Corporations, he said, “are still in”, even if they speak publicly about sustainability less often. Farmers must be “in the room,” speaking for themselves and demonstrating the practical solutions they are already delivering.

To make progress, Mr Davey said, there need to be compelling stories that connect climate action with everyday experience – “stories about the value of the transition… which don’t start from climate and emissions, but start from health. From water, from resilience, from income, from a sense of the future, custodianship, a love of the land, soil health.”

How can all that has been discussed translate into policy? Mark asked the question of Emanuele Paolo Sicuro, Policy Officer, DG CLIMA, European Commission. A central challenge was that real agricultural commodity prices are projected to decline, putting pressure on farmers’ incomes, he answered. “We must find ways to reward farmers as they deliver other ecosystem services,” such as through the Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming Certification Framework (CRCF). And a key opportunity is to leverage “public but also private finance, which for the first time is channelling into the agriculture sector.”

Across the panel, there was broad agreement that robust models, clear price signals and new finance tools will only deliver if farmers are co-designers of the transition and if the narrative connects with everyday realities.

Session 2 – Policy implications

Mark began the final panel by noting that it had the difficult job of bringing this whole conference to the finishing line, inviting speakers to pull together opportunities, constraints and policy priorities.

Regional perspective: farmers on the front line of climate change

A regional perspective came from Anne-Catherine Dalcq, Walloon Minister for Agriculture, Rural Policy, Nature, Hunting, Fisheries and Forests, who stressed that farmers are already living with climate impacts. Insurance schemes that were used only once a decade are now used every year, she said. Wallonia is working with EU and regional funds, but “it’s not enough.”

Her message was firm: Europe cannot afford a transition that simply makes food more expensive. Competitiveness matters, especially given global trade agreements. She argued strongly for maintaining circular farming systems with livestock and crops coexisting at territorial level, cautioning that regions without animals lose soil fertility and resilience.

On the CAP, she called for a policy that is strong, well-financed and simplified. Farmers are willing to take on environmental measures, “but they fear excessive controls.” Solutions must be practical, accompanied by far more investment in training and farmer-to-farmer exchange. Research is valuable, she said, but “we need to make sure the knowledge reaches the field.”

Policymaking perspective: the need to work together

A perspective from the policymaking world came from Leonard Mizzi, Head of Unit, Sustainable Agri-Food Systems and Fisheries, EC, DG INTPA, which works in partnerships in roughly 80 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean.

He described a landscape of converging pressures – hunger, climate shocks, conflicts, fiscal crises, and soaring import bills in countries such as Africa – and argued that political will is needed to bring regulation, trade policy and development assistance together.

Asked by Mark whether food security is still viewed as national security, he was blunt: “It was. It is no longer at the highest level.” Political attention is fragmented by multiple crises. A major challenge, he said, is how to de-risk investment in agriculture so that finance reaches local actors, including smallholders and women. He urged the EU to align strategic interests with real partnership, particularly in value chains such as livestock, fruit and vegetables.

His message was “a plea to bring the global north and global south closer together in a geopolitically smart and savvy way, to bring also private companies and regions closer to each other, and to come up with smart, adapted solutions to the African continent, which could be win-win, both for European companies, but also to African interests, including farming interests, but also private sector interests. “

Voice of the farmer

Liam MacHale, Director of the Irish Farmers’ Association, offered a view from the farm gate. Many farmers are innovating by improving genetics or adopting low-emission techniques, but disease outbreaks or sudden regulatory changes can wipe out progress, he said. Policy coherence is essential: measures affecting land availability or nitrogen use shape whether young people can enter farming. He warned that shrinking budgets for rural development investments (such as low-emission slurry spreading equipment) risk slowing the transition. “Farmers need time,” he said, and they need incentives that work “for all neighbours, not just some.”

Long-term investment needs long-term policy signals

Jurgen Tack of the European Landowners’ Organization added that farmers struggle to invest for the long term when policies change every seven years. Banks become cautious; uncertainty becomes a barrier bigger than land availability. CAP evaluations often begin before the policy period is complete, leaving little room to understand actual impacts. “Access to land is not the issue… it is access to finance which is much more of an issue. And there policymakers have to take the responsibility.”

Closing insights: “Bold action is needed”

Asked for final reflections, Tamas Krisztin pointed to the value of integrating farmers’ insights into modelling and policy design. Strong public and private investment in agriculture, in the bioeconomy, digital tools, and nutrient management, could “pay off manifold” and help Europe meet climate, competitiveness and food-security goals.

Mark closed by thanking speakers and participants, highlighting the workshop’s “causes for optimism, even if sometimes they are laced with pessimism.” The challenges are real, he said, but not insurmountable. His final message echoed across the room: “Courage – because we need it, and if we have it, we’ll win.”