Organic Farming, Climate Change Mitigation and Beyond. Reducing the environmental impacts of eu agriculture

Summary

Sustainably feeding the growing world population and preventing dangerous climate change are two of the major challenges facing society today. While there is a growing understanding of the complexity of the links between these challenges and of the global degradation of the environment, the contribution of food and farming to climate change mitigation is all too often looked at from the single perspective of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per hectare or kilogram of product. This narrow view fails to account for the vast array of ways that food and farming contribute to climate change, as well as the destructive effects of industrial agriculture on soils, biodiversity and the natural resources on which we depend for food production.
The impact of agriculture practices, food wastage, and diets must all be evaluated if we are to understand how food and farming can positively contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation, while simultaneously providing food security.
The issue about what is produced to meet human needs, what is produced for intermediate production purposes (e.g. livestock feed) and what is wasted between the field and the kitchen, needs to be part of the discussion. To provide healthy food in a sustainable way, we need to transform the food & farming system and transition to agriculture and food production that can adapt to unavoidable climate change, preserve our natural heritage such as biodiversity, sustains the quality of our soils, and improve the livelihood of farmers.
This report aims to provide a comprehensive discussion of these varied, yet interlinked, issues.