Abstract: The European Green Deal is a political milestone aiming to promote a carbon-neutral economy in the European Union. Decarbonizing the complex food sector requires the unified interaction among effective climate policies, economic instruments, and initiatives involving multiple stakeholders. Despite increasing efforts to highlight the importance of innovations and finance to achieve sustainable food supply chains (FSC), comprehensive information about related opportunities and barriers to mitigating emissions in the food sector is still under-explored. To cover this gap, this paper applies an existing industrial policy framework under the lens of the EU FSC to identify potential strategies that should help achieve the needed financial means and innovation actions, as well as to gauge political alignment across FSC stages. Methodologically, the pillars proposed in the framework are linked to multi-stakeholders initiatives engaged in achieving net-zero emissions. The paper highlights three main implications of the identified interlinkages. First, political directionality related to the food sector should be more comprehensively tailored to account for the specificities of all stages of the FSC. Second, research and development projects shall likewise cover all stages, instead of emphasizing only food production and agricultural systems. Finally, multiple stakeholders are crucial as promoters of technology and innovation towards a green economy. Nevertheless, initiatives should be integrated into political discussions in order to promote civil awareness, and sustainable food and services demand, aligned to political guidelines.
Abstract: Organic agri-food systems are often seen as an alternative to the sustainability challenges of today's conventional systems. However, their effectiveness in reducing greenhouse gas emissions remains limited and provides heterogeneous results. This paper investigates whether organic farming expansion reduces emissions in the Brazilian farming sector. Using municipality-level data on annual greenhouse gas emissions (2002 to 2019) and organic farming expansion (2006 and 2017), we apply the generalized synthetic control approach to estimate the emissions effects. We find that while an increase in organic farming leads to reductions in direct farming emissions, it also causes a rise in total emissions due to land-use and land-use change effects. These results vary across regions, with the North, South, and Southeast experiencing direct farming emission reductions, whereas the North and Center-West see an increase in those emissions. Our findings provide new empirical evidence on the trade-offs between organic farming and emissions, offering insights for policymakers aiming to enhance emissions mitigation strategies in Brazil.