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 promoted as a more sustainable alternative to conventional systems, yet their relationship with greenhouse gas emissions at aggregate scales remains uncertain. This study examines the relationship between the expansion of organic farming and emissions in Brazil using municipality-level panel data for 5,527 municipalities from 2002 to 2019. Applying the Generalized Synthetic Control method, the analysis shows that municipalities expanding organic farming had direct farming emissions 0.94 ktCO2e lower, on average, than their estimated counterfactual trajectories. For total emissions, the estimated difference is 14.94 ktCO2e higher when land-use change is considered, but is not statistically significant. Emissions trajectories are heterogeneous across regions, with statistically significant negative differences in direct farming emissions in the Northeast and South, and statistically significant positive differences in total emissions in the Southeast and South. These results provide the first large-scale evidence on the emissions patterns associated with organic farming expansion in a major agricultural producer. They suggest that lower direct farming emissions associated with organic farming expansion do not necessarily translate into detectable differences in total emissions at the national level, while the regional results highlight the importance of the broader land-use context. The findings therefore reinforce the relevance of considering land-use governance alongside policies supporting organic agriculture.