A just transition to ensure a sustainable future for EU agri-food systems

Key points

The EESC:

• considers that the just transition (JT) of agri-food systems must address social, environmental and economic aspects coherently, adopting a holistic, coordinated and integrated approach. The just transition should be based on the principles of distributive justice, recognition, participation, environmental and climate ambition, human rights, and ‘leaving no one behind’;

• considers that integrated public policies are needed to ensure that all stakeholders are at the heart of the just transition;

• proposes that participatory justice be integrated across all aspects of the JT of agri-food systems to ensure balanced processes that consider the realities of vulnerable actors;

• proposes that the JT should cover the protection, respect and fulfilment of all workers’ rights, including by strengthening and supporting social conditionality mechanisms such as in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), but also by guaranteeing farmers and their workers a living income;

• recommends to tackle the urgent need for a structural transformation of the EU’s food systems by:

• adopting a systemic approach to EU food systems law and governance that goes beyond agricultural production;

• working towards the introduction of living incomes and living wages right across the EU, as well as along non-EU food chains that feed the EU, and promoting forms of financial support and price stabilisation that guarantee accessibility and the right to food for citizen-consumers;

• facilitating access to land for new generations of farmers and small-scale producers;

• addressing the inequities within the CAP as crucial for ensuring a just transition;

• introducing regulations to limit speculation and financialisation in food systems;

• investing in the research and development of sustainable practices and technologies;

• adopting more ambitious and mandatory standards for sustainable and fair food procurement;

• recognising the importance of reproductive and care labour across the whole food system, and the centrality of women and young people in current and future agri-food systems;

• supporting practices that promote biodiversity and the conservation of natural resources;

• establishing an Agri-food Just Transition Fund as well as a Just Food Transition Observatory;

• integrating a global perspective to the EU’s just transition in agri-food systems;

• promoting sustainable consumption and educational programmes.