Food Systems Sustainability: The New Transatlantic Clash for Global Climate and Environmental Leadership
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2023-07-03
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en
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Abstract
The European Commission’s publication of its Farm to Fork strategy in May 2020 has led to
the emergence of a transatlantic conflict between the EU and the US over a new type of issue:
how to feed the world in a sustainable manner. Taking these recent tensions as a case study,
this thesis has examined the EU and US visions of sustainable food systems to discover the
extent to which they differ from each other. To answer this question, this thesis has examined
the EU F2F strategy and the US response to it by using the agroecology and sustainable
intensification ideal-type visions of sustainable food systems in combination with three
functions of Entman’s definition of framing as an analytical framework. The findings of the
analysis reveal that while the EU vision stands on the agroecology side of the spectrum
between the two ideal-types, the US vision is clearly on the opposite side, closer to the
sustainable intensification vision. These conclusions mean that any transatlantic cooperation
on the matter can be expected to be difficult as, while agreeing on the objective of achieving
sustainable food systems, the EU and the US do not agree on what this means, and by
consequence, the road to getting there. Finally, the dynamics identified in this thesis, which
show EU-US competition for global leadership on this novel issue of food systems
sustainability appears to align with the broader transatlantic competition for climate and
environmental leadership.
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