The Agri-Food ecosystem includes:
- Plant and animal production
- Processing of food
Find out more about the LSP(s) in this ecosystem and their commitments below:
Challenges
The agri-food ecosystem is facing major challenges due to globalisation, climate change, urbanisation, changing consumer demands, aging workforce and competition from EU third countries. The COVID-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine have accelerated these challenges and created new ones.
The agri-food ecosystem also faces specific skills-related shortages. There is an increasing need for highly skilled workers (such as agronomists, machinery and contact material specialists, circular and biotech experts, and food scientists and technologists) in the different sub-sectors, but there is often a gap between universities’ and vocational schools’ curricula and real-life industry skill requirements.
Size of the labour market
There are around 22 million workers in the agriculture sector, with a further 4.5 million people employed in the food processing sector.
Commitments made under the Pact for Skills
The Skills partnership for the agri-food ecosystem, represented by EU associations, organisations and social partners, national federations and associations, and businesses, commits to establishing a joint strategy to design and implement a sectoral education, training, upskilling and reskilling framework which maximises competitiveness of all actors involved, and enhances job attractiveness and retention.