A Green Recovery for EU Agriculture

Spearheaded Janez Potocnik, the former European Commissioner for Environment from 2009 until 2014 and current Chairman of The RISE Foundation and the Forum for the Future of Agriculture [1], 198 political decision-makers, business leaders, trade associations, NGOs, and think tanks have come together demanding a Green Recovery for Agriculture.

The statement endorses the EU Farm to Fork and Biodiversity Strategies as the blueprint for sustainable agriculture, and comes one month before the future Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is voted on by the European Parliament and National Agriculture Ministers.  The next CAP is likely to amount to almost 400 billion euros and make up 32% of the total EU budget. [2]

The vote will decide how the CAP is spent over the next seven years, and given its size, will determine whether the EU will actually be able to meet its Green Deal targets.

In the statement, the former Environment Commissioner calls for EU tax payers’ money to be pivoted on building ecological resilience, and for the future CAP to be geared around implementing the Green Deal principles and their associated strategies, in order to help farmers’ transition to a long-term sustainable model.

Join the event that will take place on October 12th! For more information click here.

[1] Janez Potočnik was the EU Environment Commissioner from between 2010 – 2014, and is currently the Chairman of the Board of the RISE Foundation, Co-Chair of United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) International resource Panel, and Chairman of The Forum for the Future of Agriculture

[2] As it stands, almost 60 billion euros of EU taxpayer money is spent every year on CAP subsidies that mostly fund intensive and factory farming. The CAP budget accounts for nearly 40% of the total EU budget.