Marcel van der Vliet, CELCAA President, was one of the panelists at an event organised by FC2A on 27th November 2020, looking at the impact of the Farm to Fork Strategy on French and European agriculture. Stressing that the European Union is the leader in exports in agri-food worldwide - reaching the value of 152 billion € in 2019- Marcel van der Vliet questioned the impact of the Strategy on the competitiveness of  European agriculture and its impact on trade, and noted that a global impact assessment on the proposed measures, is still missing.

FC2A, the French platform of the trade in agri-food, organised a high level on-line conference on the ‘Green Deal: the ambition and perspective for agriculture’ featuring the intervention of Julien Denormandie, French Minister for Agriculture, Mr Poyer, President of FC2A, Jérémy Decerle, Member of the Agriculture and Rural Development Committee of the European Parliament, and elected representatives from different French organisations in the agri-food sector. Marcel van der Vliet, President of CELCAA was one of the panelists in the panel discussing the impact of Farm to Fork, along with Philippe Mitko, President of COCERAL, the European Trade association in cereals and agro-supply, and Samuel Masse, Vice-President of CEJA, the European Young Farmers’ association.

The CELCAA President stressed that an impact assessment addressing all the proposed measures in the Strategy is very much needed, in order to have a clearer view on the possible impact in terms of volume, costs and global competitiveness, on European agriculture. Stressing that the EU is the global leader in agri-food trade, with an export value of 152 billion€ in 2019, Marcel also underlined that in 2020 and 2021 the impact of Covid-19 related measures on Horeca and tourism will still be felt by the agri-food sector. “To go greener, the agri-food sector shall first have to leave the red zone”, he said.

Marcel regretted that the Farm to Fork Strategy only shared a partial view on the role of the trade. Trade in agri-food is complementary to local sources of supply, and plays an essential role in valorizing products which would not find outlets in the domestic market. It is also vital in ensuring food security.

Finally, Marcel van der Vliet recommended that the Farm to Fork strategy should be accompanied with information and technical assistance to trading partners, with a view to raising environmental standards globally.  However, the EU should be wary of imposing its own standards of production on third countries as this could increase trade tensions.