How can the <scp>EU</scp> Farm to Fork strategy deliver on its organic promises? Some critical reflections

Moschitz, Heidrun; Müller, Adrian; Kretzschmar, Ursula; Haller, Lisa; Porras, Miguel de; Pfeifer, Catherine; Oehen, Bernadette; Willer, Helga; Stolz, Hanna

doi:10.1111/1746-692x.12294

Cited by 35 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…In addition, the market situation in terms of high soy prices and rising sales of plant-based protein food influences the potential for soy expansion (Alandia et al, 2020). EU-scale policies increasingly stimulate plant-based diets for reasons of public health, food security, and environmental impact (Moschitz et al, 2021). Additionally, consumers in the EU are becoming increasingly aware of deforestation, animal welfare, and genetically modified feed and therefore endorse Non-GM fed and organic animal products (European Commission, 2018).…”

Section: Support and Barriers Of Soy Expansion In Bavariamentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecologically and biophysically optimal allocation of expanded soy production in Bavaria, Germany

Gebhardt

Haensel²,

Schulp³

et al. 2022

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

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A debate about cultivation and trading of soy has emerged among scientists, policymakers, and the public in recent years. Export-orientated soy production in regions of South America is associated with large-scale ecosystem destruction. Since soy is an important source of animal fodder, policymakers are developing schemes to support and enhance sustainable domestic soy cultivation, especially in the EU. Expanded soy cultivation should ideally provide high yields and at the same time promote environmental benefits. For this purpose, we applied a multi-objective optimization algorithm that selects areas with maximum soy suitability, minimum erosion risk, need for low fertilizer input due to water quality issues, and need for diversification of monotonous crop rotations. We use the state of Bavaria in Germany as a case study, modeling full self-sufficiency of soy. The results of the optimization indicate synergies between plantation suitability with need for low fertilization input and crop variation, which implies that the environmental benefit of nitrogen fixation and rotation diversification from soy plants can easily be reconciled with food productivity. However, slight trade-offs occur between erosion risk and the three other objectives, i.e., locations with better soy production might be more prone toward erosion risk. As a potential consequence of expanded soy cultivation in Bavaria, we identified winter wheat, grain maize, potatoes, and sugar beet as those crops that have the highest share of displaced cultivation area. To reduce such land use conflicts and ensure self-sufficiency in relevant crops, we recommend to limit the use of soy as animal feed. Nevertheless, we propose to explicitly incorporate the local need for the environmental benefits of soy cultivation in the planning for soy expansion. In doing so, domestic soy can turn into a real sustainable alternative to imported plant protein.

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Section: Support and Barriers Of Soy Expansion In Bavariamentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecologically and biophysically optimal allocation of expanded soy production in Bavaria, Germany

Gebhardt

Haensel²,

Schulp³

et al. 2022

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

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“…The rapid increase in consumer demand for organics is driven by a variety of factors mostly related to nutrition, food and farmworker safety, and environmental concerns 4 . Similar concerns have prompted numerous policy initiatives to promote organic production, such as the European Union's Farm to Fork Strategy 6,7 . Despite popular perception, understanding the benefits and drawbacks of organic agriculture on a per output basis remains an area of active research [8][9][10][11][12][13] .…”

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confidence: 93%

Identifying and characterizing pesticide use on 9,000 fields of organic agriculture

2021

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Notwithstanding popular perception, the environmental impacts of organic agriculture, particularly with respect to pesticide use, are not well established. Fueling the impasse is the general lack of data on comparable organic and conventional agricultural fields. We identify the location of ~9,000 organic fields from 2013 to 2019 using field-level crop and pesticide use data, along with state certification data, for Kern County, CA, one of the US’ most valuable crop producing counties. We parse apart how being organic relative to conventional affects decisions to spray pesticides and, if spraying, how much to spray using both raw and yield gap-adjusted pesticide application rates, based on a global meta-analysis. We show the expected probability of spraying any pesticides is reduced by about 30 percentage points for organic relative to conventional fields, across different metrics of pesticide use including overall weight applied and coarse ecotoxicity metrics. We report little difference, on average, in pesticide use for organic and conventional fields that do spray, though observe substantial crop-specific heterogeneity.

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“…The sustainable food concept is not new, have been often associated with organic, local, fair-trade and Mediterranean-diet food. However, more recently it had also been associated with a reduction of food waste and healthy eating (Barone et al, 2019;Choudhary et al, 2019;Kuttschreuter et al, 2014), thus calling for attitude and practice changes from all the operators of the food supply chain (Moschitz et al, 2021), no latter the consumers.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the attitude towards the adoption of a sustainable diet: a cross-country comparison

Pucci

Casprini

Sogari

et al. 2021

BFJ

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PurposeUnderstanding the determinants that influence consumers' attitude to adopt sustainable diets represents an important area of research to promote sustainable food consumption. The aim of this study is to investigate how (1) the individual openness to new foods (ONFs), (2) the involvement in food trends (IFTs) and (3) the social media use (SMU) can potentially impact the attitude towards the adoption of a sustainable diet (ATSD).Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted a structured survey in eight countries: Italy, Germany, Poland, USA, Brazil, Japan, Korea and China. The final sample of 5,501 individuals was analysed applying a structural equation model.FindingsThe main results show that attitude towards the ATSD is influenced differently by the antecedents investigated in each country. In particular, the ONF positively influences the ATSD only in Italy, USA and Germany. IFT positively influences the ATSD only in Italy, Poland and USA, while negatively in Germany. SMU has a positive influence on the ATSD only in Japan, USA and Germany, while a negative one in Brazil and Korea.Originality/valueThis study presents a cross-country comparison about the antecedents of attitude towards the ATSD, thus providing evidence for the need of ad hoc marketing strategies by companies and policies by institutions at single country level.

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How can the EU Farm to Fork strategy deliver on its organic promises? Some critical reflections

Cited by 35 publications

References 5 publications

Ecologically and biophysically optimal allocation of expanded soy production in Bavaria, Germany

Ecologically and biophysically optimal allocation of expanded soy production in Bavaria, Germany

Identifying and characterizing pesticide use on 9,000 fields of organic agriculture

Exploring the attitude towards the adoption of a sustainable diet: a cross-country comparison

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