Summary
This study examined if the European Union’s (EU) Farm to Fork strategy aligns with public concerns on global issues. The authors used the EU public opinion surveys to discover the top four motives driving individuals to switch to buying seasonal and local products and/or move to a more sustainable diet to help address environmental concerns. The results show that people who selected the decline in species (biodiversity loss) as one of their four most important environmental concerns were more likely to report buying local products and switching to a more sustainable diet rather than just one of those options. Notably, for Northwestern countries, selecting climate change as a top four concern also increased the likelihood of reporting both practices, but not as strongly as choosing biodiversity as a top four concern. A strength of this study is it addresses other variables that could influence people’s purchase and/or diet behaviors, such as personal importance of environmental protection and personal characteristics, including social and cultural variables. A limitation acknowledged by the authors is the reliance on secondary data, meaning the authors did not design the survey questions. As such, participants were not provided with a definition for what buying local food or changing to a sustainable diet means. The study shows Europeans find the concerns prioritized by the EU Farm to Fork strategy to be important and are willing to engage in food consumption practices that fight climate change and biodiversity loss. Given reducing meat consumption can be more environmentally sustainable, these motivations could be an avenue for food system reform.
This study explored whether EU's new Farm to Fork strategy (F2F)—which aims to tackle climate change, protect the environment and preserve biodiversity in the pursuit of more sustainable food practices—moves in a direction that matches consumer concerns about global issues. A key point is that the traditional differences between the policy approaches related to climate change mitigation and to biodiversity protection, respectively, correspond to differences between environment-based and nature-based attitudes at an individual level. Data from Eurobarometer 92.4 (2019) provided a set of environmental concerns and two food-related pro-environmental actions (buying local products and making a diet change to more sustainable food). Consumer responses to the latter option were assumed to indicate steps in parallel with F2F. Two multinomial regression analyses were carried out separately in Northwestern European countries, and in Eastern and Southern European countries. In both analyses, climate change and species decline were distinct sources of consumer concern, which were—independent of one another—more strongly related to reporting both options than to one option only. It was concluded that the F2F policy is in line with consumer concerns about environment and nature and that this may create important new perspectives for policymakers, businesses and consumers.