The United States and the European Union have agreed that despite their major disagreements on 'sustainable agriculture', they will collaborate to develop new global food systems.
Washington and Brussels will not only strive to strengthen the global food supply but also to protect the environment and climate simultaneously.
That was stated by US USDA Deputy Secretary Jewel Bronaugh, who spoke with reporters in Rome after attending the UN conference on food systems. Bronaugh said that she and European Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski want to find common ground, even though the US and the EU have significant differences of opinion on how agriculture can be made more sustainable.
She did not provide details on how this would be achieved but emphasized that the meeting with the EU commissioner was "very positive" and that the two agreed to collaborate on future projects.
The European Union is currently revising the Common Agricultural Policy and the way the 27 EU countries cultivate and produce food. The EU aims to reduce the use of pesticides and chemical agents and shift agricultural land towards organic farming.
In the United States, there are significant objections to government intervention and imposed bans in agriculture and the food industry, and thus also to European trade restrictions on, among other things, genetically modified food products. Furthermore, the EU plans to impose a CO2 environmental tax on the import of pollution-intensive products from countries that do too little against climate change.
"We acknowledged our differences and made a commitment to focus on science and innovation to address food security and climate change," Bronaugh said. At the same time, she stressed that the Biden administration has not committed to new standards that would impose foreign reforms on American farmers.
"Everyone has a different approach to improving sustainability," she said. "There are many different approaches to sustainable agricultural practices, and there is not one way to do it."