159th CoR Plenary Session (31 January - 1 February 2024)

Key points:
1. Strengthening the role and importance given to agriculture in the Flood Risk Management Plans;
2. Strengthening the role and importance given to flood risk management in the CAP Strategic Plans;
3. Supporting shifts in perception, understanding and capacity;
4. Encourage knowledge production/sharing to support uptake of flood risk management measures;
5. Improving coordination between agriculture and flood risk management authorities.

One of the earliest policies to have contributed to building the European Union (EU), the common agricultural policy devotes most of its budget to supporting farmers. Direct payments are the main type of support used; they are managed jointly by the European Commission and EU countries through a number of schemes.

In June 2021, the European Commission unveiled its vision on how to boost the development of the EU's rural areas by 2040. The European Parliament decided to draw up an own-initiative report on the issue. The report by Parliament's Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (AGRI) is due for a plenary vote in December.

The EU's common market organisation (CMO) for seafood products was overhauled in 2013; market intervention measures were abolished and recognised producer organisations (POs) became responsible for managing supply and demand. Product labelling was also extended. Ten years on, it is time to take stock. The European Parliament is currently preparing an own-initiative report. Issues raised include improving consumer information (for instance on sustainability), tackling mislabelling and recognising cooperatives as POs.

The 'farm to fork' strategy is a roadmap to build a sustainable European Union (EU) food system, in line with the aims of the European Green Deal. Launched in May 2020, the strategy includes initiatives that are progressing at different speeds, within a lively political debate on the strategy's objectives and priorities. The EU institutions are helping to shape the various elements of the strategy. This is an update of an 'at a glance' note published in May 2021.

Small farms make up the vast majority of the EU's 10 million farms [...] Improving the conditions of small-scale food producers is a global objective [...] Small farms allocate larger shares of their production to food and have a more diversified produce portfolio than larger farms. Moreover, small farms' role in food production and availability also depends on their involvement in local food systems: when they are well connected in the supply chain, small scale producers tend to leave less space for self provisioning and their businesses are more viable. In addition to producing food, small farms play a key role in the EU's rural world. [...] Yet, the pace of disappearance of small farms has been quite rapid in recent decades. Unfavourable demographic change in rural areas is part of the explanation. In addition, it is small farms that suffer most from the challenges facing the agricultural sector, such as market pressures and weather extremes, and they have to invest greater effort to engage in innovation and new technology [...] The new policy framework that will start operating as of 2023 provides a valuable opportunity for EU Member States to use the flexibility offered in the development of their strategic plans to tailor measures to small farms and local conditions and help preserve the economic, social, and environmental assets that small farms bring to the EU food system.

Agriculture is one of the most concerned sectors, due to its exposure, to a plethora of risky phenomena such as weather, pests and diseases, changes in prices and government policies, instability of global markets. We review the literature on risk management in agriculture focusing on four key topics: i) why evidence on RM is often controversial; ii) how farmers behave in selecting among available RM instruments; iii) why some of these instruments are underutilised; iv) how to assess the impacts of innovative RM tools in order to (further) improve their design. These questions are answered transversally, and emphasis is posed on areas where further analyses are needed.