Why are we running this project?
Whereas the European Commission has presented a plan, in the form of its “Green Deal”, for a just transition to a climate-neutral and eco-friendly circular economy, including in the areas of land use and food, the central financial and administrative framework that is the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) continues to lag behind this new paradigm.
Over the next few years, it will be of key importance in the leading EU member states
- to leverage the full potential for sustainable design of their respective national agricultural policies,
- to highlight their opportunities within the respective national context,
- and thereby to change the political framework conditions at EU level accordingly when the CAP undergoes its next reform.
This is the strategic objective of the funding. The climate crisis has priority for the European Commission and for Germany’s federal government. In Germany, we can build on the findings of the “Commission on the Future of Agriculture” and of the “Borchert Commission”, and at the European level not least on the findings of the UN Food Systems Summit. Advances achieved in Germany can be expected to have a positive impact on other EU countries and on Brussels.
What are our goals?
Agora Agriculture supports the science-based transition in Germany and Europe to a climate-neutral and just agricultural, food, and forestry sector in which biodiversity is promoted. It will
- carry out in-depth analyses, organize dialogs, prepare data and existing knowledge, and make it available in a transparent manner
- draw up science-based and viable policy proposals for key areas of political action at both national and EU level and support their implementation
- promote critical and science-based public discourse
- take into account the various dimensions of sustainability
- highlight the opportunities that the transition entails not only for society but also for those sectors involved.
Who organizes and supports the project?
The key initiators and directors of Agora Agriculture are
- Professor Dr. Harald Grethe, Head of the International Agricultural Trade and Development Division at HU Berlin and, until 2020, Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board on Agricultural Policy, Food and Consumer Health Protection at Germany’s Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture, and
- Dr. Christine Chemnitz, an agricultural scientist and long-term Head of the International Agricultural Policy Division at the Heinrich Böll Foundation