Agriculture at a Crossroads: Why EU Subsidies Must Evolve

Attractive, competitive, resilient and fair. These are not words often used to describe farming in Europe, or anywhere else. But the EU's new vision for the agriculture and food sector makes these goals seem possible - and essential for food security. The next step is turning vision into action. This includes renewing agricultural subsidies using new solutions from research.

Agricultural subsidies stir emotions among Europeans. And they should, as long as even one farmer receives subsidies for land they don’t actively farm or use in any other beneficial way. But this will change if the EU's vision for the agriculture and food sector comes true. In the future, subsidies will act as an incentive to create thriving agri-food businesses, which in turn will secure a stable food supply and healthier ecosystems across the EU.

We trust and respect the new agri-food vision, particularly for its diversity of views. The vision leaves room for separate support policies for small and medium-sized farms and for large farms. It also recognizes that farming conditions are different in each region and will change in different ways with climate change. Let's take a closer look at these views.

Smallholders as active entrepreneurs

Small and medium-sized farms will never match the efficiency of industrial-scale agriculture, but they offer other valuable benefits. They can be essential in providing ecosystem services such as increasing biodiversity, storing carbon, protecting water bodies and promoting traditional agricultural knowledge, in addition to vital agricultural production. To support this, it's also important to develop affordable environmental monitoring systems that provide farmers and authorities with reliable data.

We will need to work out how to put a price tag on different ecosystem services and take them into account in subsidies. 

In the coming years, we will need to work out how to put a price tag on different ecosystem services and take them into account in subsidies. At the same time, it's important to encourage small and medium-sized farmers to become active entrepreneurs and reduce costs by working together. Opportunities for cooperation may arise, for example, from biogas production, processing of agricultural products and the sale and export of products.

Environmental conditions are changing, and so is farming

Regardless of farm size, all farmers face challenges and opportunities related to local climate and soil and increasingly to climate change.

For example, water resources in the North are becoming more valuable as Europe dries up. But the North has also faced, and will continue to face, extreme situations that were previously rare, for example winters without snow. 

We need to anticipate how climate change will affect agriculture so that we can prepare and adapt our farming methods. At the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), we have strong expertise in compensating for Finland's northern location by breeding plants and animals. These are skills that will be more and more useful in Finland, Europe and the world in the years to come. 

We need to anticipate how climate change will affect agriculture so that we can prepare and adapt our farming methods.

We should also take advantage of all the opportunities offered by new technologies in agriculture, aquaculture, cellular agriculture, greenhouse production and the like. And we must actively improve nutrient recycling to increase the EU's self-sufficiency.

Subsidies should be based more on sound research

To secure the future of European farming, we must urgently rethink agricultural subsidies: what are the objectives of their use and what instruments are used to achieve them. This won't be easy.  We emphasize that we should use and support the best research and development potential we have in Europe.

In addition to subsidies, we need to develop entire value chains from farm to fork to create profitable agribusinesses for farmers and the food industry. 

At Luke, we look forward to contributing to the research and innovation that will turn EU's agri-food vision into sustainable reality for Europe.

In addition to subsidies, we need to develop entire value chains from farm to fork to create profitable agribusinesses for farmers and the food industry.