Right to food and European and national institutions. (I Georgofili in occasione del vertice dei ministri dell'agricoltura del G20.) [Italian, English]

ABSTRACT

The crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has brought security policies at the center of the political debate, stressing the responsibility of European and national institutions in guaranteeing the right to food. In Europe, still in December 2019 the Commission document on CAP reforms and Green Deal omitted any reference to food security, underlying environmental topics. The pandemic has led to a growing demand for security of supplies, which in some States brought attention to the issues of food sovereignty, hitherto confined to developing countries. In December 2020, the European Commission, recognizing the effects of the pandemic, insisted on the need for "Fostering a smart, resilient and diversified agricultural sector ensuring food security", giving back attention to food security and agricultural production as essential purposes of the CAP. The question remains as to how much the renewed purposes assigned to European intervention will translate into coherent measures, and whether the declared simplification is not actually translating into the administration of agriculture, and thereby into complication. The challenge facing institutions today, in the context of the G20 and in individual countries, made manifest by the joint work of the pandemic and the climate emergency, is to combine joint attention to environmental sustainability and to effective production.