Open data for a fair, healthy and environmentally friendly food system
Publication Date/Time
2024-02-29T09:00:00+00:00
Using open data to understand the farm-to-fork strategy
The farm-to-fork strategy
[https://food.ec.europa.eu/horizontal-topics/farm-fork-strategy_en] is
one of the pillars of the European Green Deal
[https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/european-green-deal_en],
which strives to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent. In
this regard, the farm-to-fork strategy strives to accelerate the
European Union’s transition to a sustainable food system. A
sustainable food system includes schemes such as creating a
sustainability labelling framework that aligns with other initiatives
like front-of-pack nutrition labelling and animal welfare labelling.
Such efforts reflect the close links between healthy people, healthy
societies and a healthy planet.

Open data can be an important resource to support this transition,
helping policymakers and citizens make informed decisions. This data
story showcases how open datasets can provide valuable insights into
three key aims of the farm-to-fork strategy: fairness, healthiness and
environmental friendliness of food systems.

FAIR FOOD SYSTEMS THROUGH OPEN DATA

Building food chains that work for consumers, producers, the climate
and the environment means generating fairer economic returns in the
supply chain, while preserving the affordability of food. One way EU
Member States try to ensure fairness in the EU food system is through
measures against unfair trading practices in business-to-business
relationships in the agricultural and food supply chain.

Open datasets enable us to assess the effectiveness of measures taken
by Member States regarding unfair trading practices
[https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/common-agricultural-policy/agri-food-supply-chain/unfair-trading-practices_en].
Figure 1 shows the change in suppliers reporting unfair trading
practices between 2021 and 2023. All unfair trading practices surveyed
over this period saw a decrease. ‘Unilateral contract changes by the
buyer’ remains the most prevalent unfair trading practice.
Remarkably, the practice of buyers requiring suppliers ‘to pay for
staff of the buyer, fitting out the premises used for the sale of the
supplier’s products has dropped from about 35 % to less than 5%.
 
FIGURE 1: Change in the percentage of respondents experiencing unfair
trading practices between 2021 and 2023.

_Source:_ data.europa.eu/JRC
[https://data.europa.eu/data/datasets/survey-questionnaire-to-suppliers-in-the-agricultural-and-food-supply-chain-on-unfair-trading-practices-utps?locale=en]

HEALTHY FOOD SYSTEMS THROUGH OPEN DATA

Another element of the farm-to-fork strategy is ensuring that people
living in the EU get healthy, affordable, sustainable food. One way
Member States promote healthy food choices is through school food
policies. Research shows
[https://data.jrc.ec.europa.eu/dataset/82dc713d-d501-4107-8eee-d056518db9bd]
that school food policies are important because, among other
benefits, they help students establish healthy eating habits and help
address significant public health concerns such as childhood obesity.

The Joint Research Centre and the Directorate-General for Health and
Food Safety investigated the EU school food policy landscape. The data
from the study is available as open data for reuse and further
analysis. The study found that the main objectives of school food
policies in Europe are to ‘improve child nutrition’ (97 %) and to
‘learn healthy habits’ (94 %). Most countries’ (EU Member
States, Norway and Switzerland) school food policies  cover lunch
(88 %) and snacks (88 %). Our reanalysis of the data on food-based
standards, shown in Figure 2, highlights that the most commonly
restricted item mentioned in school food policies is ‘soft drinks’
(22 Member States), and ‘fruit and vegetables’ are most commonly
included in serving guidelines (20 Member States).
 
FIGURE 2: Food-based standards for lunch by school food policy per
Member State. Cyprus, Greece, and Poland did not have food-based
standards for lunch by school food policy when the research study was
conducted.

_Source:_ data.europa.eu/JRC
[https://data.europa.eu/data/datasets/82dc713d-d501-4107-8eee-d056518db9bd?locale=en]

ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY FOOD SYSTEMS THROUGH OPEN DATA

The third aim of the farm-to-fork strategy relates to the EU’s goal
of reducing the environmental and climate footprint of the EU food
system and strengthening its resilience. The objective is to ensure
that the food chain – covering food production, transport,
distribution, marketing and consumption – has a neutral or positive
environmental impact. A topic related to the environmental impact of
food is food waste [https://food.ec.europa.eu/safety/food-waste_en].
According to Eurostat
[https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Food_waste_and_food_waste_prevention_-_estimates],
over 58 million tonnes of food waste (131 kilograms per inhabitant)
are generated annually in the EU, with an associated market value
estimated at EUR 132 billion.

Open data enables us to investigate the sources of food waste across
the EU (see Figure 3). In most Member States (16 out of the 20 for
which data are available in 2021), household activities account for at
least half of the food waste in the food chain. Exceptions to this
trend include Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, and the Netherlands, where
the manufacturing sector accounts for more food waste than household
activities.
 
FIGURE 3: Food waste per waste category in Member States.

_Source:_ data.europa.eu/Eurostat
[https://data.europa.eu/data/datasets/ptr5p0eg2z55hzn0hvya?locale=en]

CONCLUSION

Open data is a valuable resource for policymakers and citizens to
understand the diverse elements of the farm-to-fork strategy. Open
data can shed light on fairness in the food system, such as
developments relating to unfair trading practices, which have declined
between 2021 and 2023. Furthermore, open data offers information on
public health, such as Member States’ food standards in schools,
which are set to ensure good nutrition in school meals. Additionally,
open data helps us explore the topic of sustainability, including
sources of food waste, which in most Member States comes from
household activities. Open data can, therefore, contribute to a more
holistic understanding of the food chain in the EU, ultimately
supporting the transition towards a fairer, healthier and
environmentally sustainable food system.

Do you have questions about the EU’s food system, sustainability, or
food-related health? Translate your curiosity into insights with open
datasets on data.europa.eu. Also, stay tuned for our upcoming data
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[https://data.europa.eu/en/newsletter] and following data.europa.eu on
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