Stark choices involving food production and biodiversity
EU experts looking ahead to 2040 have calculated that the best win-win possibility of maintaining Europe’s current agricultural production, while halting harm to environment and biodiversity, comes from maintaining Common Agricultural Policy subsidies, but redesigned to promote agricultural diversification (rather than specialisation) and local multifunctionality, with strict environmental policies and regulations on land use changes in place.
It’s the “best” of four scenarios looked at in a major investigation involving experts from the public and private sectors, combining land use and land cover change data with factors influencing EU food supply and demand, such as climate change, population and economic growth.
