Climate change, loss of biodiversity and the degradation of our lands and oceans are existential threats, which are fast resulting in soil depletion, extreme weather events and nutrition issues. In response to these threats, an online workshop “Dialogues on Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems: from production to consumption” will be organized by the European Union (EU) on 12-13 September 2023.

These dialogues sessions will allow key experts, policy makers as well as public stakeholders from the European Union and Mexico to exchange views in order to find common grounds, principles and actions, while identifying a way forward to further reinforce and amplify cooperation towards more sustainable and resilient food systems.

The key thematics of sustainable agriculture and food systems ; soil health, sustainable use of fertilizers and organics ; and sustainable use of pesticides, will be deliberated on this workshop financed by the EU project “Farm to Fork – F2F”.

All three sessions of this event will allow the multiple stakeholders of the food systems to identify strategies, policies, and practices that could lead to strengthened collaboration. Presentations from speakers from Mexico and the European Union will be followed by a panel discussion on existing or foreseeable synergies between diverse approaches that could pave the way for this collaboration, including how this collaboration could support the transition at global level.

As part of its Green Deal,  the EU has proposed ambitious actions and commitments to transform its food systems (the Farm to Fork Strategy) into global standards for competitive sustainability, the protection of human and planetary health, as well as the livelihoods of all actors in the food value chain.

Background information:

The food systems approach, which were also documented and called upon in the UN Food Systems Summit in September 2021, needs to take into account the various contextual differences across the planet regarding cross cutting issues such as land degradation or food loss that ultimately affect how food is produced, processed, transported and consumed.

The question of sustainable food systems goes beyond the means of production and is also subjected to several nutrition challenges such as undernutrition and hunger. These challenges persist while new and multiple forms of malnutrition rise. In particular, food-borne non-communicable diseases such as cancer, obesity, and cardiovascular conditions put pressure on people and health systems.

Although global awareness grows, new commitments are made and some solutions are designed and implemented, there is still a need for rapid and firmer action to foster a worldwide cooperation and coordination.

This series of 11 regional and country-focused workshops is funded by the European Commission’s Service for Foreign Policy Instruments (FPI) under the project supporting the Farm to Fork Strategy (F2F), which is the EU plan to contribute to resolving food challenges, and, to this end, proposes pathways for change towards sustainability that provides higher environmental, health, social and economic benefits.

More details of the European Commission’s Farm to Fork strategy are available here and on Social Media channels with the tags:

#EUFarm2Fork

@EU_FPI

#EUForeignPolicy

For more information, please contact:

“F2F – Farm to Fork” Project Secretariat (General event organisation):
Philippe van Maldeghem - farm2forkdialogue@candm.sk