Socio-economic impact assessment of scenarios, at sectoral and focus country level

Summary

With the Farm-to-Fork Strategy, the EU has set targets of reaching at least 25% of the EU’s agricultural land under organic farming and significantly increasing organic aquaculture by 2030. The Horizon Europe project OrganicTargets4EU” develops in a multi-actor approach options and policy recommendations to support the achievement of these targets. Based on an assessment of key drivers and lock-ins affecting the development of the organic sector, the project develops possible scenarios for achieving the targets set by the EU. The socio-economic impacts of the expansion of organic farming on agriculture, value chains and the organic market are analysed. Furthermore, the project provides evidence on the mechanisms that can drive demand for organic food and the impact of changing diets and food waste reduction on mitigating the reduced yields from organic production. In recent years, several studies have examined the impact of organic agriculture and its biophysical effects, such as land use, volumes of production, emissions, and nitrogen surplus. Other studies have also explored economic dimensions, including price effects, trade, consumer welfare, and farmers' income. However, most of these studies assume organic farms to be homogeneous, do not consider the emergence of new future farm types and do not explicitly account for the multiple trajectories of conversion from conventional to organic farming. This report aims to fill this gap by analysing the structural characteristics of both current and future organic and conventional farms across multiple countries and sectors. Then, it assesses the socio-economic impacts of organic agriculture expansion under two future scenarios: Organic on Every Table and Green Public Policy for the agricultural case studies, and Weak EU and Green and Fair for the aquaculture case study. The report considers eight case studies: the dairy sector in France, the broiler sector in France and Denmark, the arable sector in Austria and Romania, the outdoor vegetable sector in Hungary, the wine sector in Italy, and the aquaculture sector in the EU.