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Agricultural sustainability is intimately linked with global challenges including undernourishment, biodiversity loss, water depletion and pollution, and climate change. As such, sustainability has become a matter of concern in agricultural trade.

The Canada-EU Trade Agreement (CETA) although somewhat controversial, has been beneficial to both parties. To better understand the commonalities and differences between trading partners, a series of workshops, referred to as the Canada-EU Sustainable Agriculture Dialogue, were held in 2022 with a wrap-up conference held in Brussels in early December 2023 covering the themes of soil health, crop protection (pesticides), fertilizers, livestock emissions, and organic agriculture.

The importance of economic viability for farmers as well as the increasing frequency of climate extremes having significant impacts on producers in both regions was recognized.

Another cross-cutting theme was a recognition that while there are many beneficial management practices and technologies that have emerged, their uptake has sometimes been limited by inability to access technology or training support implementation, or the approaches were simply not practical for producers.

Further research is needed but must involve direct linkage with producers and analysis of barriers to uptake including social sciences research.

Dr. Andrew Hammermeister, director of the Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada on the Dalhousie Agricultural Campus, was an invited participant in the initial organic agriculture workshop and was invited to speak on behalf of the organic agriculture workshop as an invited panelist.

Dr. Hammermeister identified both similarities and differences between the two CETA partners. Both the EU and Canada have regulated organic standards and have a joint equivalency arrangement that supports trade. The organic sector in both Canada and the EU has tremendous variability, covering most commodity areas and producers with acreage ranging from very small to very large.

Having recognized the benefits of organic agriculture and food, the EU has identified a bold target of 25 per cent of agricultural land be organic by 2030 and has supported this initiative by allocating 30 per cent of its science funding Horizon Europe toward organic agriculture.

With 27 member states, there is significant variability among countries in their support programs and organic land base, with some countries already having over 20 per cent of land in organic agriculture. While support varies among member states, baseline environmental support payments are supplemented with organic incentives in many countries.

While Canada has the 5th largest organic market in the world valued at over $10 billion/year, it has only three per cent of the land base allocated to organic agriculture and has not yet, established a policy framework targeting organic agriculture. However, Canada is developing a sustainable agriculture strategy that could integrate organic agriculture.

New collaborative research opportunities between Canada and the EU are now poised to become available through the Horizon Europe program. This updated program will now allow Canadians to not only participate in collaborative research projects with the EU, but also receive funding through the program.

Sustainability targets are constantly evolving, making it challenging for producers to keep pace with the ever-increasing expectations of the public. Academics must prepare students for this rapidly and ever-changing sustainability landscape, and researchers must link with stakeholders to ensure that solutions for producers are practical, impactful, and accessible.