EU climate advisers say eat less meat and tax farm emissions

BRUSSELS — Europeans should eat less meat and farms must be taxed for their planet-warming pollution if the bloc is to reach its climate goals, the EU’s scientific advisers argue in a set of far-reaching recommendations that are unlikely to get a warm welcome from farmers. 

In a 350-page report published Wednesday, the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change also calls on the EU to scrap farm subsidies for climate-damaging practices, arguing sweeping measures are necessary to reduce agriculture’s contribution to global warming.

To aid farmers, they propose scaling up financial support to help them transition toward greener alternatives as well as aid to cope with increasing droughts and climate disasters. 

Yet environmental policies that so much as touch on agriculture have become politically toxic in recent years, with Brussels and EU capitals reluctant to address farm emissions in the face of large-scale tractor protests and intense lobbying campaigns. 

Still, sticking with business as usual isn’t an option, said the board’s chair Ottmar Edenhofer. 

“In order to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 within the EU, the sector has to contribute to emissions reduction,” he said. 

“And if we do this in a smart way during the transition process, in a gradual way, pricing the emissions but also using the revenues to support the transition … I think this is a beneficial pathway for the whole sector and for the whole of society.” 

While politically sensitive, the board’s recommendations are not revolutionary. 

Plenty of scientists and even the World Bank have in recent years urged governments to ensure their citizens eat less meat and to cut environmentally harmful subsidies in order to rein in greenhouse gas emissions from food, which account for about a third of all planet-warming pollution. 

And Denmark is on track to become the first country to tax agricultural pollution after Copenhagen and farmers’ associations agreed in 2024 to impose a carbon price on livestock emissions from 2030. 

Yet the board’s reports carry weight. The independent consortium of scientists is tasked by EU law with providing guidance on climate policy; past recommendations have proven influential, with the board’s 2023 advice on setting a 2040 emissions-slashing target of at least 90 percent playing a major role in leading the EU to enshrine this goal in law last week. 

The entire food system, from farming to consumption to waste management, produces 31 percent of the bloc’s emissions. | Quentin Top / Hans Lucas / AFP via Getty Images

The recommendations on agriculture also come just as the EU drafts new policies that could incorporate some of the board’s advice — from the bloc’s next long-term budget and an upcoming revision of the EU farm subsidy program, to a slate of new green legislation designed to meet the new 2040 target, and a plan to increase resilience to climate disasters.

Capping CAP payments

The Common Agriculture Policy (CAP), a behemoth that absorbs around a third of the EU’s budget, is a key target of the report. The current framework contains provisions around climate and biodiversity, but has failed to sufficiently slash greenhouse gas emissions.

The entire food system, from farming to consumption to waste management, produces 31 percent of the bloc’s emissions. More than half of that occurs during food production — think super-polluting methane released by cows as well as fertilizer use, tractor fuel and more. 

The CAP, the scientists warn, still incentivizes climate-harming practices through its vast subsidy system. The EU should therefore gradually phase out payments that are tied to livestock production, a type of income support for farmers that consumes 5 percent of the current CAP budget, they say. 

In fact, they add, the EU should reconsider the entire idea of subsidies based on farmland size, worth 39 percent of the CAP budget or more than €100 billion, as they “incentivize agricultural production over other land use” such as forestry, and thus drive up emissions.

On top of reforming the CAP, the EU should introduce a carbon pricing mechanism covering agriculture, building on the Emissions Trading System architecture that has successfully halved industry and power plant pollution, the scientists say. 

But they argue that agricultural carbon pricing should consist of three separate systems — one each for energy-related farm emissions, non-CO2 pollution such as methane, and agricultural emissions and carbon dioxide removals from land. 

The EU also needs to address consumer demand to tackle food emissions, the board says. In particular, Europeans eat too much red meat, driving up methane pollution. 

The scientists recommend the EU set up national guidelines for climate-friendly diets and set mandatory standards for marketing and sustainability labeling of food to push consumers toward greener choices. 

Climate-proofing farms

To sweeten the deal for farmers, the board suggests that with the money saved from a reformed CAP and generated through carbon pricing, the EU should support them in the transition toward climate-friendly practices and in adapting to a warmer world. 

Whether the promise of funding would be enough to placate farming lobbies that have launched massive tractor protests across Europe at any hint of additional burdens for farmers is uncertain. Political appetite for green legislation has also declined in both Brussels and capitals amid a shift toward industry- and security-focused policies. 

As part of its Green Deal, the European Commission in 2020 launched a Farm to Fork Strategy designed to make the bloc’s food system more environmentally friendly. The plan, however, was effectively abandoned following a backlash from lobby groups and conservative politicians. 

Political appetite for green legislation has also declined amid a shift toward industry- and security-focused policies. | Marijan Murat/picture alliance via Getty Images

Only last week, EU institutions struck a deal to ban vegetarian products from using certain meat-related terms. 

But Edenhofer believes that there is political space to enact the board’s recommendations, pointing to Denmark’s tripartite deal establishing a carbon tax — an agreement between the government, farmers and environmental groups — as a hopeful example. 

“We acknowledge that this is very complicated, but … we need a regulatory system which incentivizes emission reductions in the agri-food system,” Edenhofer insisted.