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On 31/01/2020, the Commission's Directorate-General for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Safety presented three basic areas of impact to the Farm to Fork Strategy - these should be economic (boosting farmers' incomes, ensuring farm viability, food quality and security); environmental and climate impacts (ensuring sustainable use of natural resources, tackling climate change), and social impacts (strengthening employment on farms and rural areas, emphasis on health, strengthening animal welfare). However, there are some tensions between these areas - between social and economic impacts (strengthening environmental, sanitary and quality standards will lead to reduced agricultural yields, maintaining affordable food prices may put the food's economic viability at risk), between economic and environmental impacts (reducing environmental and climatic traces of agriculture, while enhancing agricultural productivity to meet increasing demand, can endanger the viability of farms), also between environmental and social impacts (reducing livestock production can lead to abandonment of agricultural land, depopulation of rural areas, and decline in biodiversity).

The European Commission should publish the Farm to Fork Strategy on 31/03/2020, together with the EU Biodiversity Strategy.
More information is available here, here and here.

The European Commission will publish the EU Biodiversity Strategy on 31/03/2020. According to preliminary information, the Strategy could include a proposal to reduce the use of pesticides and mineral fertilizers by "at least 30%" under the 2030 green commitments. The risk of pesticide use should even be reduced by 50% by 2030. At least 10% of the European agricultural land should be earmarked for non-productive and landscape features such as hedgerows and trees. Under this Strategy, the Commission should also propose a new simplified CAP payment for small farms - an initiative like the one-hectare initiative aimed at protecting ecosystem services. The European Union will also have to extend the area of organic farming to 30% of agricultural land. In terms of funding, EUR 20 billion per year should be allocated to finance environmental recovery across European countries, also by 2030. Financial resources should be allocated from a combination of EU funds including the CAP, regional funds, Cohesion funds and Horizon Europe. A significant area (but not further specified) should be allocated to carbon-rich ecosystems. The Strategy will be presented at the end of March, but the proposal will have to be approved by the Member States and the European Parliament. France plans to halve the amount of pesticides used in agriculture by 2025. France will endeavour to implement this objective at EU level.
More information is available here.

The European Commission will present European climate legislation on 04/03/2020. Climate legislation will set a target for achieving climate neutrality by 2050. The impact assessment should be published in August or September 2020 - here it should be decided whether to set a 50 or 55% reduction target for 2040. Scotland has already committed itself to achieving zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045 and reducing emissions by 75% by 2030.

Last week, German Minister of Agriculture Julia Klöckner said that the new Common Agricultural Policy must introduce ambitious environmental and climate to prevent further deterioration of the current situation. According to Klöckner, uniform measures and guidelines should be put in place to prevent the deterioration of the current situation, and that will on the contrary reinforce environmental ambitions. Eco-schemes should therefore be mandatory in all Member States, and the minimum budget that Member States must allocate to eco-schemes should also be allocated. Furthermore, Klöckner supported the introduction of a harmonized uniform share of non-productive areas for agricultural land (the European Commission seeks to introduce at least 10% of the area of agricultural land for non-productive and landscape features). The emphasis on animal welfare should also be strengthened.

Poland is organizing a conference on external convergence, the conference will take place on 24/02/2020, and Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Janusz Wojciechowski will also be present. Eleven Ministers of Agriculture from Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal Romania and Slovakia were invited to the conference. The meeting will only take place 4 days after the extraordinary European Summit to discuss the Multiannual Financial Framework. The issue of external convergence is, together with the capping of direct payments, one of the topics falling within the prime minister's competence.