A delegation of European Union officials met this week with U.S. agriculture representatives and top Agriculture Department officials to exchange ideas on how to tackle some of the economic, climate, supply chain and other challenges both regions are facing.
The meeting, which took place on Monday and Tuesday, focused on "Agricultural Resilience in Uncertain Times," according to a schedule of the event. Its participants included Pierre Bascou, the deputy director-general at the European Commission Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development (DG AGRI), and Katherine Geslain-Lanéelle, DG AGRI's director of strategy and policy analysis, as well as Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, USDA Undersecretary for Farm Production and Conservation Robert Bonnie, and Undersecretary for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs Alexis Taylor.
It's one of about six to seven meetings U.S. and EU officials have each year under the US-EU Collaboration Platform on Agriculture, a knowledge-sharing effort first launched by Vilsack and European Union Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski in 2021.
Bascou and Geslain-Lanéelle, speaking to reporters Tuesday, said farmers operating under both governments face some similar challenges, including droughts and floods exacerbated by climate change and high production costs. Attracting younger farmers can also be difficult in both the U.S. and the EU.
These are some of the factors fueling grower farmer unrest in Europe, which has led to protests across the continent, Bascou said. But he noted there is a social dimension as well. The movement began in individual nations about specific issues, but has since "gathered momentum" throughout the region, he said.
"I think many farmers in Europe are starting to question the role of our modern society, which is increasingly an urban society," Bascou said. "They feel that, I think, the rest of the population is more and more disconnected from the farming sector, from rural areas."
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Producers in both the U.S. and the EU are also trying to determine how to mitigate — or even measure — some of their climate impacts, Geslain-Lanéelle said. This is a big question for U.S. and European livestock producers, who are trying to find ways to lower their carbon footprints. She said the meetings raised some potential issues for both government bodies to analyze more closely, like livestock feed and manure management.
"This [is] the kind of conversation that sounds very technical, but, in fact, it showed that it's good that we discussed that," she said. "Because we see that on both sides of the Atlantic, [producers] have the same concern, the same worries."
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has opened up a "strategic dialogue on the Future of Agriculture" to determine what European farmers' needs are and how they could be addressed, Geslain-Lanéelle said. The dialogue includes 29 people representing a different part of the industry or supply chain, and will be chaired by German professor Peter Strohschneider.
The group will deliver a report in August or September with a "shared vision of the future of the farming sector," as well as some recommendations to European lawmakers "to give a new dynamic or impetus" to their work, she said.
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