Introduction to the conference "(Re-)territorializing agriculture : Between the promotion of local products and trade in Europe"

Frison, Christine [UCL]

Through its "From Farm to Fork" strategy, published in May 2020 (in the middle of the coronavirus crisis), the European Union, encouraged by citizens' movements, advocates a transition of food systems (including production, transport, distribution and marketing) towards positive or neutral environmental impact to respond to the challenges generated by climate change. This strategy converges with the new Green Deal portfolio whose objective is "to restore the balance between human activity and nature" (Frans Timmermans, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission). The challenge is significant. Despite the strategy's stated ambition to change food systems, its contours remain blurred. Yet the urgency is clear: the health crisis linked to COVID-19 has, among other things, highlighted the lack of resilience of European food systems in the face of a global crisis. At the heart of the first wave, when the delivery of medical equipment was suffering from delocalized production, calls and warnings about the risk of destabilizing food production and supply chains multiplied (notably FAO on March 26, 2020; FAO, WHO and WTO on March 31, 2020). Will our heavy dependence on global supply chains and the new awareness of their fragility allow us to envisage an innovative emancipation project for Europe to combine food, climate and environmental resilience? If the European strategy "From Farm to Fork" seems to be giving a new political direction to ensure the resilience of systems to both environmental crises and socio-economic changes, the Common Agricultural Policy planned for the next seven years seems to be going in the opposite direction. This conference aims to explore ways to build resilience in European food systems. This academic event will be held in a mixed face-to-face and distance mode, and will leave room for dialogue with actors of the agricultural world (e.g. representatives of cooperatives, farmers' movements, agricultural unions, representatives of European agricultural policy, etc.), who are warmly invited to participate. As a follow-up to this conference, we encourage participants to contribute to a thematic issue (journal prospecting in progress) that we will co-edit.