Sustainable farming isn’t a threat to food security. It might be the only thing that saves it.

The real threat to your dinner isn’t organic farming – it’s climate change (and the agroindustry lobby). In this op-ed Dr Andrea Beste calls for an approach to food security based on scientific facts and systemic sustainability.

The European Commission has walked away from its own Farm to Fork Strategy. After years of promising a real shift toward sustainable farming, less pesticide use, and more resilient food systems, the talk now is all about “competitiveness”. We can’t afford to be too green, is the messaging from Brussels – we need to keep food on the table.

But this is political spin. The fact is, the EU’s backtracking goes against the latest science.

The EU continues to claim that environmental rules risk undermining food production. But this contradicts the Commission’s own 2023 study which states: “Climate change is one of the key drivers of the long-term trend in food production.”

That same study explicitly names organic farming and agroecology as “drivers of food security.” Why? Because they reduce dependence on fossil fuel-based fertilisers, improve soil health, and protect biodiversity – the actual foundations of any long-term harvest. In other words: intensive farming with heaps of pesticides and mineral fertilisers may look efficient on paper, but it’s systematically destroying the natural systems we all rely on.

The European Commission showed foresight when it presented the Farm to Fork Strategy in 2020. And the aim – to restructure the EU’s food system from farm to fork with a view to sustainability – remains urgently necessary to this day. However, the strategy was opposed from the outset.

The lobby machine behind the U-turn

So why the backtracking? Not because of science. Because of money.

In 2021 the independent watchdog Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) documented the coordinated lobbying campaign that attacked the Farm to Fork Strategy. Big names like CropLife Europe (pesticide lobby), Copa-Cogeca (farming lobby), and Euroseeds (seed industry) funded their own impact studies – and surprise, surprise – those studies always concluded that going green would crash yields and raise prices.

These impact studies systematically ignored important factors like changing diets, cutting food waste, or natural pest control. They cherry-picked data to make sustainability look like a luxury we can’t afford.

It worked. Under pressure from the agri-chemical lobby, Conservatives and the Far Right in the European Parliament, the Commission ultimately parked its green ambitions.

Fact-checking the yield gap

One of the main arguments used to justify the rollback is that sustainable farming means lower yields. Let’s pick this myth apart piece by piece.

First: Current yield measurements are outdated. They only look at the main crop, ignoring everything else – in particular the ecosystem in which it is grown. In contrast, organic farming has deep efficiency – better energy balance, better water storage, more humus, higher resilience. Those are “yields” too, just not the kind that show up on a standard harvest spreadsheet.

Second: The system we’re comparing everything to is broken. Intensive monocultures are propped up by irrigation, synthetic fertilisers, and chemical cocktails that poison the soil and shrink biodiversity. What use are higher harvests to us if, at some point, we can no longer harvest anything at all?

And third: The yield gap is smaller than often claimed – and in some cases, organic outperforms conventional. A University of California study found that between conventional and organic cropping systems, organic yields were 19.2% lower than conventional yields.

Sustainability cuts (hidden) costs

Here’s something the lobby studies conveniently forget: organic farming saves society money. Two great examples:

– Pears: Eosta calculated that conventional pear production causes €1,163 per hectare per year in soil damage. Organic production actually improves the soil – to the tune of €254. That’s a €1,317 advantage for organic. Per hectare. Just from soil.

– Potatoes: Soil & More estimated groundwater pollution from conventional potatoes at €1,298 per hectare. For organic potatoes? €0.40.

Add up the costs of water treatment, health problems from pesticide exposure, and biodiversity collapse, and the savings increase. Organic farming delivers numerous societal benefits and cuts the hidden costs to society.

So, what now?

The EU is making a huge mistake. By prioritising “competitiveness” over sustainability – pushed by corporate lobbies – it is ignoring its own scientific evidence and undermining the very resilience it claims to protect.

Our future food supply will not be secure if we continue to undermine the ecosystem services that form the basis of production – pollination, healthy soils, natural pest control and functioning food chains.

We don’t need to choose between an empty stomach and a poisoned planet. That’s a false choice, spread by those who profit from the status quo. What we need is a real transition: less industrial meat – more grazing, less waste, less speculation on food, and a serious expansion of agroecology and organic farming.

That’s not ideology. That’s the science. And it’s been on the table since before 2020. The only question left is whether Brussels will get its facts straight – or keep listening to the lobbyists.

For more information, see the new Factsheet on Food Security by Dr. Andrea Beste

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