The European Commission has presented an action plan to help farmers and livestock breeders accelerate the transition to organic production. With this, the EU hopes that within ten years at least a quarter of European agricultural land will be organic.
The main goal is to "stimulate demand" through promotional campaigns and other measures. EU Commissioners Janusz Wojciechowski (Agriculture) and Frans Timmermans (Environment) pointed out that this type of production primarily benefits small and medium-sized food producers.
With the presentation of their organic incentive, the European Commission once again emphasized the importance of the new Green Deal subsidies in the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Negotiations on this are currently difficult. Many EU countries consider the agricultural and livestock transition unnecessary, incomplete, too fast, too much, or too mandatory.
With the action plan, Wojciechowski and Timmermans stick to the line of the European Green Deal and the Farm to Fork and Biodiversity Strategies. These proposals are intended to provide the already fast-growing organic sector with the right subsidies to achieve the Green Deal target.
The now presented organic incentive contains proposals to stimulate both the production and consumption of organic food. Each European spends an average of 84 euros per year on organic products, but the differences between EU countries are very large, ranging from 1 to 344 euros per inhabitant.
Organic production varies between EU countries, with Austria leading (26%), followed by Sweden and Estonia with about 20%. In other countries, it remains limited to around 3%, such as Bulgaria or Romania, said Wojciechowski.
This is not only due to differences in purchasing power (organic products are generally more expensive), but mainly due to differences in availability. The area of organic farming in the EU has grown by nearly 66% over the past decade, from 8.3 million hectares in 2009 to 13.8 million hectares in 2019. It currently represents 8.5% of the total area.
In the current budget of the Common Agricultural Policy, about 1.8% of the budget (€7.5 billion) is spent to support organic farming. The future CAP will include environmental subsidy schemes of €38-58 billion for the period 2023-2027, depending on the results of the still ongoing CAP negotiations.