The European Commission adopted a new package of measures for the sustainable use of key natural resources, which will also strengthen the resilience of EU food systems and farming.

This package will boost innovation and sustainability, by enabling the safe use of technical progress in new genomic techniques, enabling the development of climate-resilient crops and reducing the use of chemical pesticides, and ensuring more sustainable, high-quality, and diverse seeds and reproductive material for plants and forests. Finally, new measures also propose to reduce food and textile waste, which will contribute to more efficient use of natural resources and a further reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from these sectors.

Objectives of the package

1. Leveraging natural resources and improving soil health: a soil monitoring law will put the EU on a pathway to healthy soils by 2050, by gathering data on the health of soils and making it available to farmers and other soil managers. The law also makes sustainable soil management the norm and addresses situations of unacceptable health and environmental risks due to soil contamination. 

2. Supporting resilient and sustainable food systems, including: 

• the proposal on New Genomic Techniques combines a high standard of protection for both human and animal health and the environment with a contribution to a resilient and sustainable food system through innovative plant products.
• The Commission also addresses the Council’s request to submit a study complementing the impact assessment of the proposal for a Regulation on the sustainable use of plant protection products. The proposed Regulation on the production and marketing of plant reproductive material will consolidate, update and simplify the existing legal framework regarding all sectors of seed by replacing the 10 existing Directives. 
• The proposal for a Regulation on the production and marketing of forest reproductive material will help ensure that the right tree is planted in the right place for forests to thrive under current and projected future climatic conditions.

3. Ensuring efficient use of produce by tackling food and textile waste: the proposal also requests that Member States address unacceptable risks for human health and the environment due to soil contamination, guided by the polluter pays principle. Member States will need to identify, investigate, assess and clean up contaminated sites.

You can find more information on this webpage. ERRIN's Bioeconomy Working group will closely follow up on this package within its work on the Soil Mission for Europe.