44. Farming and the environment: can they be reconciled?

The Green Deal, launched by the European Commission in 2019, is the EU’s flagship initiative to accelerate and deliver a transition to a more sustainable world – not least in agriculture. But in the recent European election campaign, the Green Deal came under considerable scrutiny from farmers and farming organisations, highlighting the tension that sometimes exists between agriculture and the environment. In this forty-forth edition of Food for Europe, we look at this question once again in the wake of Europe’s unique democratic exercise. We’ll hear from Wolfgang Burtscher, the director-general of the European Commission’s directorate-general for agriculture and rural development, DG AGRI; and from Clara Bourgin, from Friends of the Earth, an environmental advocacy group. Our report comes from Emilia-Romagna in Italy, where we meet Matteo Pagliarani, a 29-year-old farmer who is also a vice-president of the European Council of Young Farmers. He shares with us the challenges and joys of living off the land, as well as his perspective on our central question: whether it’s possible to balance Europe’s need for food production with our responsibility to the environment.