The agri-food ecosystem is one of the 14 key industrial ecosystems identified in the EU's Industrial Strategy. This strategy announced the co-creation of transition pathways with stakeholders to help accelerate the green and digital transition.
This collaborative effort aims to build on existing strategies and enable their implementation by providing concrete actions. These actions aim to reinforce commitments by relevant actors towards the sustainability, digitalisation and resilience of the ecosystem.
The transition pathway for the agri-food industrial ecosystem was published on 11 March 2024.
The Commission invited all relevant stakeholders from the public and private sector to collaborate on developing this transition pathway. Along with participants from other sectors, contributions were made by companies, industry groups and governmental bodies, as well as social partners, research institutes, academia and citizens.
This comprehensive and inclusive approach allowed the Commission to pinpoint the challenges and opportunities of the transition. It also helped with drafting specific actions and commitments.
The sections below outline the stages of the co-creation process for developing the agri-food ecosystem's transition pathway.
Published in July 2023, the agri-food transition pathway Staff Working Document (SWD) aimed to guide the public consultation.
This document explored the critical issues of the transition to initiate a stakeholder dialogue. It touched upon topics such as sustainable competitiveness, innovation, investments and skills.
The SWD presented an initial analysis of the topics, and included questions for stakeholders to respond to in the public consultation.
The public consultation resulted in 80 responses from many different stakeholders, such as business associations, non-governmental organisations, public authorities, trade union organisations and citizens.
These stakeholders came from 19 EU Member States and 2 non-EU countries. All of these respondents were invited to the workshops organised after the consultation.
In October and November 2023, 3 online stakeholder workshops were organised by the Commission. They focused on technologies, investments and funding, and SMEs.
These workshops were facilitated by an external moderator and also included presentations by Commission colleagues from other directorates, such as DG RTD and DG AGRI.
The insights from these workshops played a key role in shaping the content of the final version of the transition pathway for the agri-food industrial ecosystem.