by Mokhtar Ben mlouka (Policy Intern at CELI)
The concept of food security is defined by its four pillars: availability, access, utilization, and stability[1]. Stability as a goal to achieve in national and regional agriculture has gained more interest post WW2 due to the instability caused by the food shortages that the European continent faced, which translates into one of the major aims of the Common Agricultural Policy of the EU[2]. Fast forward to current times, food systems are still facing cascading global crises. Stability thus ensures the ability to secure sufficient, safe, and nutritious food is resilient to shocks, whether economic, climatic, or geopolitical[3]. In the context of the European Union, the Common Agricultural Policy, providing one of the world’s most extensive systems of agricultural subsidies, has been a cornerstone of European food security[4].
This analysis will evaluate the impact of such subsidy frameworks on the stability of food systems, assessing their role in risk management, mitigating strategic dependencies, and strengthening supply chain resilience during recent shocks, namely the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine[5].
The period from 2019 to 2022 was a major stress test for global food systems. The COVID-19 pandemic triggered initial disruptions through labor shortages and logistical complications due to trade restrictions. Just as economies began to recover, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 unleashed a second, more severe shock, particularly to the EU. The two nations were key producers and exporters of wheat, corn, and sunflower seeds, as well as potassium and phosphorus fertilizers, meeting a significant portion of the import demand for dozens of countries across Asia and Africa[6]. This disruption sent global food prices soaring, and reduced energy and fertilizer supplies, with fertilizer prices at one point reaching over 200% higher than pre-pandemic levels. These events directly threatened food stability. Disrupting the pre-war exports and affecting accessibility to food due to rising food price inflation. In this difficult phase for food and agriculture, the heavily subsidized agricultural model of the EU’s faced a test that determined its resilience to shock. The below analysis will discuss the key mechanisms of the CAP by which it has aimed to maintaining food security.
A primary mechanism through which the subsidy regime contributes to stability is its function as a large-scale risk management tool. A significant portion of agricultural budgetary expenditure, particularly in the EU, is dedicated to direct payments to farmers which despite their perks still pose a set of problems including creating distortions by favouring larger, wealthier landowners who capture most of the payments simply because they own more land, and reinforcing structural inequalities in the countryside[7]. They can also discourage innovation and diversification, since farmers may rely on guaranteed income rather than investing in more sustainable or competitive practices, they can also slow environmental progress when payments are not effectively linked to ecological performance, leading to dependency without meaningful green outcomes[8]. These direct subsidies are often decoupled from production volumes. These payments serve a crucial stabilizing function by providing a predictable baseline income. This financial cushion has indeed proven vital during crises, as it successfully insulated farmers from the full blow of volatile market swings and ensured they have the capital to continue planting and raising livestock even when short-term profitability is uncertain[9].
Empirical evidence supports this effect. Analyses comparing food security stability across numerous countries during the 2019-2022 crisis period have shown that nations with comprehensive agricultural support policies demonstrated significantly greater stability in key areas. Statistical models indicate that the presence of a policy framework like the CAP was associated with a markedly smaller shock to both food supply and food affordability. The negative correlation between such subsidies and the volatility of food security indicators suggests that these financial mechanisms act as effective shock absorbers[10].
A second critical element of regional stability is strategic dependence on external sources for essential foodstuffs, with excessive import reliance especially from geopolitically unstable suppliers is a clear vulnerability[11]. The EU as a whole benefits from a high degree of food self-sufficiency (the region’s average GFSI food-security environment score was 74.8 in 2022), and many large producers maintained or improved supply indicators during the 2019–2022 period (for example Spain and Poland scored roughly 75.7 and 75.5 respectively). Yet these aggregate numbers do not include important variations within the bloc. Several Central and Eastern members record lower overall GFSI scores and weaker availability or protein-supply indicators: Slovakia’s overall score is around 68–69, is considered a comparatively weaker in terms of supply and protein availability, while Hungary (overall 71.4) is a combination of a high measured sufficiency of supply (around ~85.2) with notable gaps on sustainability and nutrition policy. The EU thus faces intreregional differences which matter when it comes to crisis resilience since the high aggregate EU self-sufficiency can be a misleading variable that does not eliminate local vulnerabilities where lower availability and weaker nutrition policy or poorer adaptive capacity can translate global shocks into national shortages or price shocks. Policy that treats the EU as uniformly secure therefore risks overlooking member-state blind spots that would benefit from targeted measures such as improved storage and logistics and protein-supply diversification.
Overall the EU is a leading example in this sense despite its minor regional disparities, especially when we look at it In contrast, many of the low- and middle-income nations had worsening physical food availability.
This divergence supports the claim that a subsidized and productive internal agricultural sector can insulate a bloc from the type of availability crises that affect more import-dependent nations.
Furthermore, a large single market acts as a powerful internal stabilizer, allowing for the free flow of food from surplus to deficit regions within the bloc, allowing also for specialization in crop production. During recent supply shocks, Eastern and Southern European countries acted as intermediaries, helping to diffuse disruptions across the union. This internal cohesion is a direct benefit of a harmonized policy and significantly mitigates the risk of strategic dependence on potentially unreliable external suppliers[12].
The stability of a food system is only as strong as its weakest link in the supply chain. The COVID-19 pandemic was primarily a shock to logistics and labor which tested the resilience of the farm-to-fork infrastructure[13]. The CAP had been supporting a diverse and widespread agricultural base across many member states which created a more equally distributed and less concentrated supply chain by focusing on regional development thus reducing the risk of a single point of failure, unlike systems reliant on a few mega-producers or critical import chokepoints.
The performance of the EU food system during the logistical crises of the pandemic is proof of its efficiency as despite initial and temporary shortages on some supermarket shelves, EU farmers, processors, and retailers largely managed to maintain food supplies. The high level of infrastructure development within the EU, which has been supported by broader cohesion and development funds that complement agricultural policy, transport and logistics performance of the EU was a significant factor in maintaining food security stability during the crises, an area where the EU generally excels.
An interesting counter-example is the situation of the United Kingdom post-Brexit. The decrease in physical food availability experienced in the UK during the pandemic was made more difficult by its exclusion from the EU’s single market and common agricultural policy framework. This suggests that the regulatory and trade harmonisation within a subsidy bloc is itself a component of supply chain resilience[14]
However, the ambitious environmental targets set by the EU, including those of the European Green Deal which sets a new vision but also new challenges as it puts agriculture as the central focus area of Europe’s climate neutrality targets which would require a rapid transformation of farming practices while the sector remains highly dependent on consistent output and predictable costs[15]. The demand for structural changes that many farms are not yet technically or financially prepared to implement will at least in the short term potentially lower yields, increase production costs, and create uncertainty in input markets. Regions with lower productivity or limited access to capital risk being disproportionately affected which will widen the internal disparities within the EU. The Farm to Fork also operationalises this by mandating steep reductions, including a 50% cut in pesticide use and risk, a 20% reduction in fertiliser application, a 50% decrease in antimicrobials in livestock and aquaculture, and the expansion of organic farming to 25% of EU agricultural land by 2030.
As a result of these mandates it is possible that the stability achieved by the current subsidised model could be compromised if the transition to a greener agricultural system is not managed well.
In conclusion, while challenges related to dietary quality and the green transition exist ahead, on top of the already burdening challenge of reducing the cost of the common agricultural policy which takes up to a third of its budget mainly due to the generous subsidies, it is still evident that the CAP has, thus far, largely fulfilled its foundational mandate to guarantee stability. On another note, the CAP still suffers from a multitude of issues on different levels including the numerous misallocations and corruption cases including the case between 2016 and 2023, where Greece distributed large amounts of CAP funds based on fictitious land leases and non-existent farming activity, leading to a record €392.2 million fine from the European Commission, the dissolution of OPEKEPE, and thousands of legitimate farmers facing delayed or missing payments (EPPO, 2024–2025) [16]
[1] FAO, Global Strategic Framework for Food Security & Nutrition (GSF), (2021)
[2] European Commission, “The common agricultural policy at a glance,” EC Agriculture & Rural Development
[3] FAO policy briefs and State of Food Security analyses. See FAO and UN reports (2020–2022). Example FAO note on Ukraine impact: “Note on the impact of the war on food security in Ukraine,” FAO (July 2022).
[4] Global Food Security Index (GFSI 2022) and EU CAP documents describing Pillar I direct payments and budgetary role. Economist Impact (GFSI 2022) global report
[5] FAO, (2020) The impact of COVID-19 on food security and nutrition
[6] World Bank Commodities/Commodities Markets Outlook (April 2022)
[7] Marian Rizov, Jan Pokrivcak & Pavel Ciaian, “CAP Subsidies and the Productivity of EU Farms,” Journal of Agricultural Economics (2013)
[8] JRC reply and WUR impact assessment (2021)
[9] Economist Impact GFSI (2022)
[10] Global Food Security Index 2022 (country reports and tables). Extracted from country reports and the GFSI country pages for the exact scores (2022).
[11] FAO Note on the impact of the war on food security in Ukraine (2022)
[12] The Common Agricultural Policy at a Glance, European Commision
[13] The impact of labour shortages on UK food availability and safety (2023) (in discussion of pre-Brexit times)
[14] United Kingdom Food Security Report 2021
[15] European Commission, “Questions and Answers: Farm to Fork Strategy,” Press Corner (2020).
[16] EPPO press release (May–June 2025); Reuters coverage (2025).
