Agriculture & economics

Abstract: The EU Food System Monitoring Dashboard supports EU initiatives by integrating knowledge on primary production, processing, distribution and consumption, including the health impacts of diets. The first version of the monitoring framework was released in November 2024 by the Joint Research Centre, the European Commission service providing evidence-based science and knowledge to support EU policies. It provides information on the progress towards a fair, healthy and environmentally friendly food system, built on a set of environmental, economic and social (including health and animal welfare) indicators. Since then, almost 400 datasets have been assessed in terms of their suitability for producing indicators for monitoring, including data from public sector, market research and non-governmental organisations, and scientific results. The selected indicators have been visualised in a monitoring dashboard that was last updated in November 2025. This report summarises the main steps taken to further develop the system, which targeted three main areas. First, the conceptual framework was extended to develop principles to monitor resilience and governance on a pathway towards sustainability. Second, persisting data gaps were addressed, which resulted in 35 new indicators, mainly in the social dimension and the Governance and Resilience thematic areas. Third, we improved the navigability of the dashboard by grouping the indicators, and we investigated the option of introducing composite indicators. The data in the dashboard offer policymakers, stakeholders and citizens relevant information about the sustainability of the EU food system. Considering the significant impact of the food system on the EU’s economy and citizens, the monitoring tool provides the systemic approach necessary to simultaneously address competitiveness, the environment and health in the EU.

Abstract: The Spring Outlook Workshop 2026, jointly organised by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre and the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development, brought together policymakers, market experts and stakeholders in Brussels on 20 and 21 May 2026 to discuss the drivers shaping EU agricultural commodity markets towards 2035, in order to identify assumptions for the medium-term outlook on the prospects for agricultural markets and income. Discussions highlighted persistent uncertainty from energy prices, geopolitical tensions, fertiliser dependency and shifting trade relations, alongside the driving forces on milk, meat and arable production ranging from climate change, animal welfare policy and demographic change. Participants examined the implications of EU trade agreements and the risks a closure of the Strait of Hormuz would pose to oil, fertiliser and food prices. The workshop also explored cross-cutting issues including the bioeconomy, land use change, automation in agriculture and food loss and waste reduction.

Abstract: The European Union and United Kingdom (EU+) remain heavily dependent on imported high-protein feed, primarily soybeans, raising concerns about supply resilience and environmental impacts. We assess three legume-based pathways—trade, policy support, and dietary shift—against a 2030 projection horizon, using integrated regional agro-economic, farm-level, and life cycle assessment models. The trade pathway, simulating a complete interruption of protein imports, provides an analytical upper bound for domestic EU+ legume production. It drives substantial land reallocation (+1.5 million ha legume area) but fails to fully replace imports, resulting in higher prices (+150% for soybeans) and reduced livestock output (-3%), exposing systemic vulnerabilities. Farm-level results underscore economic incentives over agroecological potential. Policy support moderately increases legume cultivation with limited market impacts but improves farm-level viability where conditions are favourable. Dietary shifts increase pulse imports (+100%) but reduce global GHG emissions more effectively than supply-side measures. Overall, the results highlight legumes’ potential, limits of self-sufficiency, and the complementary roles of economic incentives and demand-side measures for sustainable and resilient EU+ food systems.

Abstract: This report documents the Environmental Master Tables (ENVMAT) framework, a comprehensive data integration system linking heterogeneous environmental datasets with microeconomic data from the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) based on geolocations. The framework addresses fundamental data interoperability challenges: temporal misalignment between high-frequency environmental observations and annual economic reporting, spatial mismatch between gridded environmental data and point-based observations, and heterogeneity across environmental data sources. We integrate high-resolution climate reanalysis data (AgERA5), soil moisture data (GLEAM), and soil property maps (ESDAC) with approximately 900,000 FADN observations from 2011 to 2021. A three-phase modular workflow performs dataset-specific processing, multi-scale spatial integration via zonal summary statistics, and produces temporally aligned master tables with optional imputation of missing values. The resulting database provides approximately 10,000 environmental variables capturing temporal dynamics and spatial heterogeneity across point, 5km radius buffer, and NUTS3 integrations. The framework establishes a reproducible template for environmental-economic data integration at scale, supporting a broad range of applications in policy analysis and environmental economic research.

Abstract: Here, we propose organisms from the European Union's (EU) List of Quarantine Pests for regulation as priority pests based on their potential economic, social and environmental impacts in the EU territory. First, a shortlisting methodology was developed to recommend, from the total organisms in the Union Quarantine Pest list, a subset of pests for detailed assessment. Second, expert knowledge was elicited for 46 pests selected by EU risk managers from the shortlisted pests. Third, expert-based estimates of biological parameters were used to inform a multi-criteria analysis. Our methodology combines impacts on economic, social, and environmental domains into a composite indicator, which is used to rank the pests by their expected impacts. The robustness of our recommendation with respect to the uncertainty in biological parameters and the potential diversity of importance given by risk managers to different domains was evaluated. The contributions of the economic, social, and environmental impact-domains to the composite indicator reveal that high potential impact can be driven by diverse profiles. The regulation on priority pests mandates control and monitoring efforts in all EU Member States, which require considerable resources. Our study provides evidence-based decision support to risk managers, to inform decisions on where to allocate the limited resources for plant health surveillance and monitoring. If the list of priority pests is to remain unchanged in size, our results suggest that if based only on impacts, 9 of the 20 currently listed pests should be substituted.

Abstract: The EU Food System Monitoring Framework is a comprehensive tool developed by the EC-JRC to track the sustainability performance of the EU food system across environmental, economic, and social dimensions, covering the entire food chain. Its mission is to provide eliable, policy-relevant evidence. This factsheet demonstrates the potential of the dashboard through 12 selected indicators giving a flash analysis of the underlaying data.

Abstract: This study assesses potential implications for EU trade, producers and consumers of lowering maximum residue levels (MRLs) for imported food and feed to the limit of quantification (LOQ) for the most hazardous pesticides banned in the EU. Drawing on a new dataset linking EU approval status, residue monitoring, authorisation for use in third countries and trade flows, it identifies 18 most hazardous active substances not approved in the EU with MRLs above the LOQ affecting 235 commodities and 86 exporting countries, and models three scenarios differing in assumed exporter adaptation. Across all scenarios, the direction of effects resulting from lowering the MRLs to the LOQ is similar — imports decline, EU production rises and consumer prices increase — but magnitude depends strongly on exporters’ adaptation assumptions, ranging from negligible to substantial impacts. When the reduction of MRLs to the LOQ leads to complete halt in the affected trade flows, we see a 41 % reduction in total EU agricultural imports. As producers in third countries are assumed to respond to this reduction by adjusting their practices, this reduction declines to 8 % and then to 0.4 % depending on the cost of adaptation and the extent of assumed use of the active substances in third countries. EU production partly substitutes this reduction in imports as crop output expands while livestock output contracts. Price impacts depend on the scenarios: sizeable at world and EU levels under the no adaptation bound, but small once adaptation is taken into account. Results differ strongly across active substances, commodities and countries, so no uniform assumption about exporter behaviour holds. A targeted analysis of the active substance cyproconazole, undertaken to assess the representativeness of the substitution costs assumed in the scenarios, indicates that EU-approved alternative active substances are available but could raise production costs by 20–40 %. The study offers evidence on potential market impacts for the objective that pesticides banned in the EU should not return through imports. However, it faces limitations notable from the lack of available evidence at active substance–commodity–country level on use and substitution cost. This points to the need for further assessment. The study is not an impact assessment, as it does not cover either environmental nor social dimensions, and its results should be considered as a range bounding plausible outcomes rather than predicting them.

Abstract: Agent-based models are valuable tools for agricultural policy evaluation. They can represent the heterogeneity of farmers and farmer interactions and are especially useful when behavioural and social factors are integrated to represent farmers’ decision-making. We assess the potential of agent-based models by conducting a review of forty-eight agent-based models developed for European agriculture and a survey with twenty-six modellers and twenty-four policy stakeholders. We find that while agent-based models provide nuanced representations of farmers’ decision-making processes, there is a gap between what is currently implemented in models, what modellers consider important and what policymakers expect.

Abstract: In September 2025, the European Parliament and Council signed the law of the Revision of the EU waste framework directive, which includes also reductions for food loss and waste (FLW). This comes at a time of concern over the EU's strategic autonomy for its agrifood sector. Taking a cradle-to-grave approach, this paper combines official FLW statistics with recent advances in simulation modelling to quantify the impacts of two FLW cuts scenarios on EU food availability, affordability, and stability. Compared with a business-as-usual baseline, average EU household per capita food budget savings and self-sufficiency of up to €192 and 0.82\%, respectively, are observed, accompanied by falling average EU food production of up to 2\%. With the inclusion of FLW behavioural market adjustment costs (taxes), average EU food producer price falls of up to 1\% are lower than reported in previous studies, whilst in a handful of member states, consumer food prices rise marginally. This hitherto unforeseen outcome is a signal for anticipating and ensuring adequately tailored social protection schemes for the most vulnerable.

Abstract: A pre-registered online experiment with 1,745 European farmers in four countries tested if behaviourally informed interventions (BII) can increase participation in voluntary measures under the green architecture of the 2023–7 Common Agricultural Policy. We tested seven BIIs including framing (non)adoption as benefits (costs), framing the payment as compensation or reward and the provision of social norms both as stand-alone interventions or when combined. The results showed BII did not increase stated adoption for eco-schemes, but combining social norms with changes in payment framing or framing non-adoption as costs had a positive effect on agro-environmental and climate measure adoption.