In the race to reduce the damage that agriculture is wreaking on the climate, the EU and the U.S. are veering toward a high-stakes standoff over how to transform the global food system, and their dueling visions could mean we all lose out.
The brewing Cold War between the two agricultural heavyweights over the future of farming risks undermining not only tens of billions of euros‘ worth of agricultural trade annually, but also threatens to undercut the more fundamental aspiration to reverse global warming through cooperation on food systems.
America’s chief bogeyman is Europe’s Farm to Fork strategy, which seeks to prioritize sustainability by slashing pesticide usage in half by 2030 and by ensuring that organic production covers a quarter of European farmland.
For Washington, this is a recipe for disaster that will reduce crop yields, push up food prices and threaten food security. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has released economic models saying world food production would drop by 11 percent and prices would shoot up 89 percent if all countries followed the European model.
“The world’s got to get fed, and it’s got to get fed in a sustainable way. And we can’t basically sacrifice one for the other,” [US Agriculture Secretary Tom] Vilsack said.
