European agriculture can phase out pesticides, reduce its impacts on climate and biodiversity while ensuring food security for Europeans, French researchers Pierre-Marie Aubert and Xavier Poux stated during a conference held in Paris on 13 September.
“We are presenting an alternative scenario that can lead to a large scale transformation of the agricultural sector via the agroecological transition,” Pierre-Marie Aubert told the audience at AgroParisTech.
Pierre-Marie Aubert and Xavier Poux are researchers for French think tank Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations. The two researchers were presenting the ten-year scenario they referred to as Tyfa (Ten Years for Agroecology in Europe).
“The current debate on the future of agriculture has stalled because of the impossibility to combine the rise of agricultural production on the one hand and the reduction of the impacts on climate and biodiversity on the other,” explained Pierre-Marie Aubert.
“To overcome this apparent opposition, we have chosen to reverse the question and we therefore asked what are the needs of the Europeans for a healthy and sustainable food and what are the agricultural models for it?”
This is why the starting point of the report focuses on the health impact that results from the current eating habits of the Europeans. “In terms of health, diet-related diseases are growing at an alarming rate (diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular diseases),” the study states. “Although we produce a lot in Europe, we eat too much and our diets are unbalanced in relation to the nutritional recommendations of the European Food Safety Organisation and the World Health Organisation,” it continues.
Yet, there is a growing demand from customers for organic products throughout Europe, which shows they are more and more concerned about the relation between their health and the food they eat, Pierre-Marie Aubert observed.
The scenario therefore starts by rebalancing the European diet: more cereals, fruits and vegetables, protein crops and less meat, eggs, fish and dairy products.
“From there on, our study shows that an agroecological Europe is able to feed Europeans in 2050, reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 40% and recover biodiversity,” Pierre-Marie Aubert said.
This implies phasing-out pesticides and other agricultural inputs to instead adopting green agricultural practices such as crop rotation, using manure to fertilise soils, as well as ecological infrastructures such as hedges, ponds, trees or low walls.
