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Nature-based solutions for sustainable and resilient food systems
Feeding people, restoring nature.
Sustainable farming systems increasingly align with nature-based solutions (NbS), placing biodiversity at the core of the farming approach while delivering environmental, social, and economic benefits. The Sustainable Food Systems theme explores how approaches such as agroecology, organic farming, regenerative agriculture, agroforestry, and nature inclusive agriculture work with natural processes to enhance ecosystem health, support resilient livelihoods, and maintain essential resources like soil, water, and biodiversity. NbS farming practices integrate crop diversification, sustainable soil management, and landscape restoration. NbS offer a pathway to transform food systems, helping farming adapt to climate change while ensuring food security and vibrant rural communities.
What can NbS do for policy makers?
- Enhance biodiversity and ecosystem services on farmland through trees and hedges, flower strips, and agroforestry systems that support pollinators and soil health.
- Improve soil health utilising crop rotation, cover cropping, composting, and reduced tillage.
- Reduce environmental impacts of farming through integrated pest management, sustainable livestock systems, and low input or organic farming.
- Increase climate resilience and mitigation by employing carbon farming approaches, diversified systems, and water retention practices.
Promote sustainable land and resource management that restore natural landscape features.
Why do NbS matter to policy?
- Support NbS through agricultural policy for soil health, biodiversity, climate resilience, and public benefits across farming systems.
- Align food, climate, and biodiversity strategies to ensure coherent, cross-sector policymaking.
- Strengthen the resilience of food systems by promoting diversified landscapes and natural resource management.
- Enable multi-level governance and stakeholder engagement across farmers, regions, and supply chains.
- Improve monitoring and reporting frameworks to track environmental impacts, including biodiversity and ecosystem services.
What are the EU policy instruments for Sustainable Food Systems?
The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the EU’s main funding and regulatory framework for agriculture and has a central role in shaping sustainable food systems. National CAP programmes can directly support farmers to implement NbS through dedicated measures, investments, cooperation, and advice. While the CAP offers significant potential to scale NbS and align agriculture with the EU’s climate and biodiversity targets, significant gaps remain to support real transition at the farm level.
The Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) aims to sustainably manage fisheries and conserve marine resources, maintaining fish stocks at sustainable levels. The policy has contributed to improvements in some sea basins, but challenges remain, including overfishing in certain regions, limited attention to climate change impacts, and gaps in implementation and enforcement.
The Farm to Fork Strategy is the EU’s strategic roadmap to transform food systems to be fair, healthy, and environmentally sustainable. The strategy sets targets to cut pesticide use by 50%, fertilisers by 20%, antimicrobials by 50%, and reach 25% of farming certified as organic. The strategy explicitly supports NbS to improve soil health, biodiversity, climate resilience, and resource efficiency across agriculture and food supply chains, through policies like the CAP and CFP.
EU Bioeconomy Strategy and Action Plan to 2030
The EU Bioeconomy Strategy aims to build a sustainable, circular economy based on renewable biological resources, supporting food security, climate action, and economic growth while creating jobs across rural, coastal, and urban areas. It strongly promotes NbS to enhance resource efficiency, resilience, and environmental performance of agriculture and forestry enterprises, backed by EU funding and innovation initiatives.
Policy resources for NbS and sustainable food systems
The policy resource database provides a curated collection of policy resources that can help policy makers understand, implement, and monitor NbS for sustainable food systems.