The European Approach to Sustainable Food Security: What Role for the Common Agricultural Policy?

Food security has always been at the heart of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). However, the way in which this objective has been pursued and formulated has changed considerably since the policy was first introduced in 1962. Not least, the European approach to food security has evolved from being primarily focused upon ensuring high levels of food supply and internal price stability to becoming increasingly responsive to the environmental implications of agricultural intensification. Thus, as the wider costs of intensive production have garnered heightened recognition, so too has appreciation of the need to move towards ecologically sustainable forms of agriculture, as a pre-requisite for securing long-term food security.

In response, the sustainable management of natural resources and climate change has become a central CAP objective aimed at addressing the environmental externalities of land management practices funded under the CAP. And the relevance of this discussion has recently been carried forward in the context of the 2013 CAP reforms, which delivered the latest in a long line of measures aimed at greening the policy and reducing the negative externalities of European agriculture. These were explicitly introduced to give expression to the underlying principle of sustainable development, but important questions remain as to their ability to provide ecologically sustainable solutions.

This thesis explores the central CAP objective of sustainable agriculture and its key role for ensuring food security. In doing so, it seeks to add to the current debate by critically assessing the impact of the sustainable development paradigm upon the framing of the EU agri-environmental measures and the greater implications that these may have for the long-term protection of ecological systems and food security. In particular, it analyses the main legal measures delivered by the 2013 CAP reforms and the extent to which they correspond to these long-term objectives.