0.3 Executive summary

Recently the European Union has adopted the Green Deal, which through its EU Climate Law, its Biodiversity 2030 Strategy, Farm to Fork Strategy, and Zero Pollution Action plan, aims to put Europe on a path of sustainable development.  Among the many aspects of achieving this objective, Europe will need to consider the relationship between the agricultural sector and its environmental impacts. This is needed because the pressures to our environment from the continuous resource demands of the agricultural production in addition to a rapidly changing climate puts both the environment and the continued delivery of affordable and healthy food at risk. 

Agriculture is a key sector for the European economy, providing food security for all European citizens and livelihoods to a large share. With 10.5 million farms across the EU alone, the agricultural sector plays an important role for the rural economy. 44 million jobs in farming and the food sector are dependent on agricultural production. Agriculture also occupies around 40% of European land area.

Enough and clean water is an essential production resource for agriculture, yet pollution from nutrients and pesticides together with over abstraction continue to be major pressures on Europe’s waters, reducing the quality of the resource on which agricultural production depends.  Furthermore the demand for agricultural land and water has led to major hydromorphological alterations of Europe’s water courses with large consequences for especially biodiversity.   These pressures have developed as agricultural yields have increased gradually across past centuries and at an accelerated pace after World War II, and are currently being made worse as climate continues to change. As an example, either water scarcity or excess water may threaten agricultural production. With 500 million citizens around 44 million jobs in Europe depending on continued food production, this can contribute to political and social instability. At the same time the world population is growing, raising the question of how a population of 9.6 billion by 2050 can be fed without completely undermining the environment.

This report recaps the challenges that remain for water management in Europe, in relation to the agricultural sector, the role of European Polices for obtaining a more sustainable development trajectory, but also to some of the more systemic changes that are needed.  While a water perspective has been chosen, many of the issues and solutions discussed are relevant also to biodiversity or soils, as well as to climate change mitigation. Agriculture is currently responsible for around 10% of Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions.  

Due to its strong reliance on water, the agricultural production exerts major pressures to Europe’s aquatic environment. The main pressures from agriculture are linked to diffuse nutrient and chemical pollution, water abstraction and hydromorphological alterations. These pressures impact water quality, quantity, ecology, and biodiversity in Europe’s rivers, lakes, transitional and coastal water bodies as well as the marine environment. According to an analysis of the second river basin management plans that were reported to the European Commission, by European Member States, the United Kingdom and Norway, only 44% of Europe’s surface water bodies achieve good ecological status as required by the Water Framework Directive. In EU-27, only 31% of surface waterbodies achieve good ecological status, and frequently failure to achieve this status was due to pressures from agriculture.

Climate change already impacts European water and agriculture, and this will continue. Precipitation has increased in parts of Europe and decreased in others. The growing season is also getting longer, increasing the water demand of crops, and seasonal variability is increasing.  Hence, the pressure on water quantity is expected to be exacerbated by climate change, especially in southern Europe where precipitation is expected to decrease and a very large share of the water resource is already used for irrigation. In other parts of Europe, more precipitation will increase transport of nutrients and chemicals into streams, potentially increasing pollution. It will also increase flood risk and general water logging of soil potentially increasing hydromorphological alterations.

European policies are key for obtaining a more sustainable balance between agricultural production and ecosystem health, especially the interface between the Water Framework Directive, and other environmental and food safety policies on the one side, and the Common Agricultural Policy measures on the other. It is critically important that these policies are aligned to one another to maximise policy effectiveness and coherence.

Most EU regulation targets good farming practices. It includes both specific initiatives towards reducing inputs of nutrients, pesticides, and water, as well as more environmentally friendly land use practices. Incentives and regulations for the uptake of good farming practices are therefore key to achieving reductions. Incentives have to be attractive to around 10 million farmers in Europe.  While opportunities exist for support to uptake of good farming practices, their insufficient uptake and conflicting policy objectives (trade-offs between objectives not properly recognised or regulated) often prevent achieving the desired environmental results. Lack of implementation at national and regional level contributes to those barriers.

Agricultural production is a major component of Europe’s food system. It is widely recognised that the current food system is unsustainable due to its large environmental pressures. Sustainability implies not only that Europe’s demand for food and nutrition is provided, but also that livelihoods are sustained and ecosystem health is ensured. Otherwise, long-term viability is threatened. Most existing measures address only the activities in the agricultural production. Other aspects of the food system such as global market forces, global consumer demands, the role of the food processing and retailers are also important but they are not yet addressed by policy. The Green Deal Biodiversity 2030 and the Farm to Fork Strategies provide important new targets to increase the share of organically farmed land and promote more balanced nutrient management. They also advocate the need to influence consumer preferences towards more sustainably produced choices.

It will be a considerable challenges in coming years to develop a food system that balances demand for food and nutrition, while sustaining and ensuring ecosystem health. This report points to some of the aspects that need consideration to achieve this.