Want food security? Eat less meat, major report says …Europe’s top farming university is calling for smaller livestock herds and a shift toward plant-based diets
When the Netherlands’ Sicco Mansholt became Europe’s first agriculture commissioner back in 1958, the continent’s farmers faced a very different situation than they do today. Officials in the postwar period were focused on guaranteeing food availability, boosting productivity with better fertilizers and pesticides, protecting farm incomes with fixed prices, and eating the difference to keep the cost of bread down for consumers. Mansholt’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) — created in 1962 — did all of that and more. Yet by the end of his career, the Dutchman had come to understand the environmental and economic harms the CAP was wreaking....
