A sustainable food system should be able to do two things at once: remain within ecological limits and provide people with secure access to healthy food and decent livelihoods. Across Europe, however, these two achievements do not always go hand in hand. European food production has historically developed around a particular set of priorities – higher output, productivity, efficiency and competitiveness. This model has improved food availability, but it has also intensified dependence on external inputs, pressures on land and water, greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss. At the same time, unequal conditions remain embedded in food supply chains and rural economies. 

The problem, therefore, is not simply that agriculture needs better technologies or more efficient practices. The deeper question concerns the scale, intensity and organisation of production itself. European countries are often caught between two incomplete models: food systems with relatively strong social outcomes but high environmental pressures, and systems with lower environmental pressures but weaker social foundations. 

This is where a degrowth perspective becomes useful. Degrowth challenges the assumption that sustainability can be achieved simply by making existing systems more efficient. Instead of asking only how to produce more with fewer resources, it poses a broader question: can food systems provide enough, fairly, and within ecological limits? 

Applied to food production, this means that environmental and social outcomes need to be considered together. A system cannot be described as sustainable simply because its greenhouse gas emissions or pesticide use are comparatively low if agricultural incomes remain inadequate or access to healthy food is insecure. Equally, strong social outcomes cannot fully compensate for a production model that depends on intensive resource use and generates high ecological pressures. 

This was the starting point for the analysis we presented at the regional degrowth conference in Kraków in June this year, and which we have since submitted for publication. The analysis covered food-system sustainability across 25 EU countries between 2010 and 2022. We examined environmental factors such as agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, pesticide use, organic farming, drought impacts and water stress, alongside social indicators including agricultural incomes, the cost of a healthy diet, food insecurity and access to safe drinking water. We then combined the environmental and social dimensions in a way that penalises serious imbalances between them. 

The objective was not simply to produce another ranking of European countries. Rather, we wanted to understand where the main sustainability trade-offs appear, and what these differences might imply for food-system transitions. 

A persistent European trade-off 

The results point to a recurring pattern. Several Western and Southern European countries tend to perform relatively strongly on social indicators, often benefiting from higher agricultural incomes, stronger infrastructure and lower levels of food insecurity. Yet these outcomes frequently coexist with relatively high environmental pressures. More intensive production systems can depend heavily on synthetic inputs, energy use, specialised production and long supply chains. Strong integration into international markets can also create additional dependencies and make food systems more vulnerable to external disruptions. 

This does not mean that their social achievements should be dismantled. Quite the opposite: they demonstrate the importance of strong provisioning systems. But the ecological costs behind these outcomes cannot be ignored. 

A different pattern appears in parts of Central and Eastern Europe. Some countries perform comparatively better on environmental indicators, often in the context of historically lower agricultural intensity. Yet lower environmental pressure can coexist with weaker social outcomes, including lower agricultural incomes, problems of food affordability, or more limited access to services. 

This, too, should not be idealised. Less intensive agriculture is not automatically a degrowth success story. Low ecological pressure that results from economic marginalisation, inadequate investment or weak social provisioning does not constitute a socially just transition. 

Fig. 1. Country rankings for both SFSI component indicators (2022). 

From a degrowth perspective, then, neither model is sufficient. This became still clearer when we examined the economic organisation of agriculture. Different groups of countries displayed different combinations of capital intensity, labour intensity, trade dependence and public support – yet no single economic structure consistently achieved both strong environmental and strong social outcomes. 

The implication is important: there is no ready-made model of sustainable European agriculture waiting to be scaled up. Different structures produced different forms of imbalance. This matters because debates about agricultural transformation often assume that there is one desirable model towards which countries should converge. In the European context, this frequently means increasing productivity, investment, competitiveness and market integration. Our findings suggest that such a one-directional transition would be problematic: countries begin from different positions, and their main sustainability challenges are not the same. 

Different starting points require different transitions 

For countries that already achieve relatively strong social outcomes but generate substantial environmental pressures, the challenge can be described as selective de-intensification. This does not mean reducing production indiscriminately or undermining food security. It means identifying the most environmentally damaging forms of production and reducing the ecological burden associated with them – lowering dependence on synthetic inputs, scaling back particularly high-impact production, supporting shorter supply chains and encouraging dietary patterns based more strongly on sufficiency. 

The challenge is different in countries with comparatively lower environmental pressure but weaker social foundations. Here, the priority should be social strengthening without catch-up intensification. Improving rural livelihoods should not require reproducing the same production model that has generated environmental pressures elsewhere. Instead, policy could focus on fair agricultural incomes, stronger rural public services, local and regional processing capacity, and the development of agroecological production. 

Because these starting points differ, a European food transition cannot follow a single blueprint. The direction of change depends on where the greatest gaps lie: some countries need to reduce ecological pressures while protecting strong social outcomes; others need to strengthen social provisioning without reproducing the high-intensity model seen elsewhere. 

A transition with more than one pathway 

The broader implication is that European food policy needs to move beyond the apparent trade-off between ecological sustainability and social security. The challenge, instead, is to combine what the two incomplete models currently achieve only separately: lower ecological pressures and stronger social foundations. 

No existing European food system offers a perfect blueprint, but this is not necessarily a reason for pessimism. It suggests, rather, that transformation should not be understood as a matter of identifying one successful model and replicating it everywhere. The more useful task is to understand the different barriers that prevent food systems from becoming both ecologically sustainable and socially just. 

A degrowth-oriented transition would therefore take different forms across Europe, depending on national and regional starting points. Its overall direction, however, would be shared: towards sufficiency, resilience, ecological regeneration and social justice.