Europe finally chooses innovation

Europe has done something it hasn't done in a very long time: it chose innovation. After years of debate, the European Parliament has voted to adopt the New Genomic Techniques (NGT) regulation, concluding the European legislative process for NGTs. This is the first genuinely pro-innovation piece of legislation this sector has seen, and it deserves to be recognised as such. It is a step change for plant breeding in Europe, and for the farmers, scientists and plant breeders who have spent years making the case for it.

The adoption of the NGT regulation marks the end of a long conversation in Europe about the future of plant breeding technologies. More importantly, it marks the beginning of a new one: about what kind of agricultural system Europe wants to build, and whether it has the confidence to see it through.

We are not operating in a stable world. Climate volatility is intensifying. Extreme weather events are becoming part of the seasonal calendar for farmers from Finland to Portugal. And through all of this, farmers are being asked to produce more food, use less water, reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, protect biodiversity, and improve soil health - simultaneously.

This new framework unlocks precision breeding techniques that can deliver direct, on-farm benefits: varieties that are more resilient, better adapted to local conditions, and able to maintain yield and quality under the climate pressures farmers are already facing. In practice, this can mean more reliable harvests, helping farmers reduce risk and stabilise income.

The NGT vote is a milestone. But it does not resolve Europe's wider innovation challenge.

For too long, European debates have treated sustainability and productivity as competing objectives. In reality, they must go hand in hand. The most sustainable agriculture is not necessarily the one that uses the fewest technologies. It is the one that produces the food society needs while placing the smallest burden on land, water and the natural world.

The real question is whether Europe can reconcile its environmental ambitions with the reality that sustainable agriculture will require more innovation, not less. That question remains very much open.

Biological solutions – such as microbials, biochemicals and plant extracts - are advancing rapidly and represent a significant part of the answer for farmers who have already seen a net loss of 89 crop protection solutions from their toolbox in recent years .  Without a dedicated legislative framework in Europe, these tools will never deliver the long-term impact they are capable of.

The ongoing negotiations on the Food and Feed Safety Omnibus offer an opportunity to fix this. The Commission has proposed a clear and workable definition for biocontrols, alongside targeted provisions to speed up their path to market, giving farmers faster access to solutions they already rely on as part of their integrated pest management.

What is concerning is that in the Council, simplification for biocontrols is being confined to so-called "low-risk" substances - a small niche that does not give farmers effective tools to tackle pests, weeds and disease at scale. This would leave intact many of the bottlenecks the Omnibus is meant to address. We need Member States to think bigger.

Europe has shown with the NGT regulation that it can act when the evidence is clear and the will is there. The question now is whether it will apply that same confidence and resolve to biocontrols and to other reforms reforms that determine whether the next wave of innovation ever reaches the field.