EU food policy shifts to supply security as war drives up prices

The European Union is looking at how to make food supplies more secure, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine cut off key exports and pushed up prices.

Ukraine is the world’s No. 2 shipper of grains, and is also an important supplier of chicken and eggs to its EU neighbors. Its exports have effectively been cut off after Russia blocked Black Sea ports, and its companies are now focusing on domestic supplies amid a humanitarian crisis. That has sent prices soaring.

“What’s going on in Ukraine is going to change our whole approach, and our view on the future of agriculture,” EU Commissioner for Agriculture Janusz Wojciechowski said in the European Parliament. “We have to have a return to food security.”

The EU is working on measures that would allow fallow land to be used to grow protein crops to avert a scarcity of feed, Wojciechowski said. It’s also looking at offering support to the pig-meat industry, and studying a proposal to allow member nations to grant aid to farmers in a relaxation of state-aid rules, as happened during the pandemic.

The comments mark a shift in rhetoric from the bloc, which had been focusing on a “farm to fork” strategy centered on making agriculture more sustainable, including by cutting pesticides and antibiotics, and boosting organic farming.

Some countries have already reacted to volatile prices by restricting their own trade. Hungary introduced measures giving the government the option to purchase any grain destined for export, while outside the EU, Serbia has banned shipments of some foods with exemptions for its neighbors. 

“Obviously we can’t just drop everything we tried to develop in sustainable developments of farming,” Wojciechowski said. Agriculture must be resilient “in the face of different crises.”