Why the EU’s Bioeconomy Strategy Needs Food, Fermentation, and Farmers at Its Core

Courtesy: Unsplash

Europe is redefining its industrial future through the lens of biology. What began years ago as a sustainability exercise, improving resource efficiency, valorizing waste, regenerating soils, has evolved into something far more consequential: an attempt to build a competitive, sovereign bioeconomy capable of withstanding geopolitical volatility, climate shocks, and accelerating global competition in biotechnology. The European Commission’s updated bioeconomy strategy captures this shift with new clarity. It positions biomanufacturing, circular nutrient flows, and microbial processes as the scaffolding of a new European industrial era.

Yet as the strategy expands its ambitions, it exposes an unmistakable tension: Europe wants to lead in biotechnology, but remains unsure how boldly to apply that ambition to food. That hesitation is increasingly strategic, not merely symbolic. Food is where biology meets culture, where climate meets politics, and where innovation meets the daily lives of 450 million Europeans. Leaving it only partially integrated into Europe’s bioeconomic transformation carries real consequences, for competitiveness, for resilience, and for the livelihoods of farmers already absorbing the hardest edges of climate volatility.

At a moment when global competitors are accelerating, Europe finds itself at a crossroads. The path it chooses will determine whether the continent becomes an architect of the next food era or a cautious observer of advancements unfolding elsewhere.

Europe’s Bid for a Bio-Based Industrial Future

The new bioeconomy strategy is anchored in a simple but ambitious premise: biology is infrastructure. Fermentation, enzymes, microbial inputs, and bio-based materials are no longer niche innovations. They are strategic assets capable of reducing dependence on fossil feedstocks, stabilizing supply chains, and anchoring high-value manufacturing capacity within Europe’s borders.

The United States had likewise been racing ahead. The Inflation Reduction Act supercharged investment in biomanufacturing, clean energy, and next-generation materials, drawing global companies toward its generous incentives. But the political reset in Washington introduces uncertainty. A Trump-led administration, with a MAGA-aligned Congress, signals a retreat from climate-oriented industrial policy, casting doubt over whether key IRA incentives will survive. For companies making long-term investment decisions, the US may remain a scientific powerhouse, but its policy environment suddenly looks less stable. Europe has an opening, but only if it moves with coherence and speed.

Against this backdrop, Europe cannot afford incrementalism. Recognizing this, policymakers have elevated fermentation, both precision and biomass fermentation, to a new strategic status. For the first time, these technologies are explicitly tied to Europe’s competitiveness and sovereignty. Fermentation is increasingly understood as a platform for producing high-value food ingredients, dairy analogs, functional proteins, oils, fats, and enzymes without the land and emissions footprint of conventional agriculture. It offers a pathway for diversifying Europe’s protein supply and strengthening food-system resilience at a time when climate extremes, trade disruptions, and geopolitical tensions are tightening margins across primary production.

Courtesy: Enifer Bio

Yet even as fermentation moves to the center of Europe’s industrial narrative, its food applications remain constrained by slow and unpredictable regulatory pathways. Novel foods approvals often stretch for years. Member states apply rules unevenly. Public communication around emerging food biotechnologies is fragmented, leaving innovators to navigate cultural anxieties alone. Europe recognizes the strategic potential of microbial biomanufacturing but remains hesitant when the outputs enter the food system. This gap between ambition and implementation is not abstract; it is shaping where companies choose to pilot, scale, and commercialize their work.

The irony is that Europe is uniquely positioned for leadership. Its scientific base in fermentation is world-class. Its industrial fermentation expertise, from pharmaceuticals to enzymes, is deep and long-established. Its universities and research institutions generate a steady pipeline of biotechnological breakthroughs. And despite frequent portrayals as adversaries of innovation, Europe’s farmers are central to any viable bioeconomic future.

Early Signals of Change and Why Europe Must Move Faster

Some of the most promising examples of a more inclusive and pragmatic bioeconomy are emerging not from Brussels but from national initiatives, particularly in the Netherlands. These developments illustrate what Europe could achieve if it aligned its political ambition with regulatory pragmatism.

Earlier this year, the Netherlands became the first EU country to formally approve public tastings of foods made via novel fermentation processes before they are cleared for sale. Under a new Code of Practice developed jointly by the Dutch ministries of health and agriculture, alongside startups and scientific advisors, companies using precision or biomass fermentation can apply to host tightly controlled tasting sessions for products still awaiting EU-wide authorization. The framework covers foods such as animal-free dairy proteins, plant-based fats produced through fermentation, and high-protein microbial ingredients. It sets strict conditions on safety data, participant criteria, medical oversight, and the number of tastings permitted per year.

Crucially, this is not an isolated decision. The Netherlands had already pioneered a similar framework for cultivated meat tastings, making it the first country in Europe to allow consumers, regulators, and experts to experience these products firsthand. Both moves reflect a pragmatic understanding: you cannot build a competitive food bioeconomy if the only place people are allowed to encounter new products is inside regulatory dossiers.

Another Dutch milestone is unfolding in Zuid-Holland, where RESPECTfarms has partnered with dairy farmer Corné van Leeuwen to install the world’s first on-farm cultivated meat production unit. Cultivated meat is often portrayed as an urban or high-tech alternative to agriculture, yet this project embeds it directly into the operations of a working farm. It challenges the narrative that next-generation proteins threaten farmers and instead positions farmers as co-creators of the bio-based future. The model diversifies revenue streams, builds resilience against climate shocks, and reduces exposure to volatile livestock markets. It is a blueprint for how cellular agriculture can strengthen rural economies rather than bypass them.

RESPECTfarms

These examples matter because Europe cannot build a credible bioeconomy on top of a food system that feels excluded from it. Farmers are stewards of biomass, managers of ecosystems, and the first to absorb economic trauma from climate disruption. Slowly integrating them into the bioeconomy is not only shortsighted, but it also undermines every goal Europe has set for climate adaptation, food security, and rural prosperity.

And food represents far more than a consumer sector. It is the interface where climate resilience, trade security, public health, rural livelihoods, and cultural identity converge. The updated strategy acknowledges food’s dimensions but stops short of giving it the same industrial status as biochemicals or pharmaceuticals. That decision carries real risks. While Europe awaits consensus, Singapore, China, Australia, and even the UK are establishing themselves as hubs for food biotechnology. By the time the EU fully aligns, the commercial center of gravity may have shifted elsewhere.

Europe does not need further proof of urgency. Extreme weather is already suppressing yields. Global protein imports remain a structural vulnerability. Younger farmers face a future defined by instability. Consumers want healthier and more sustainable foods, but often lack affordable access to them. Every signal points toward both strain and opportunity.

The bioeconomy strategy is a meaningful step, including fermentation, strengthening biomanufacturing, and offering a more coherent vision of how biological resources should flow through the European economy. But naming is not embedding. The real test will unfold in the Biotech Acts, in EFSA’s reform efforts, in national implementation, and in whether policymakers ultimately treat food not as a sensitive category but as a strategic asset.

Europe has an unusual chance to shape the future of food, scientifically, industrially, and culturally. It has early examples proving that innovation can coexist with safety, and that farmers can thrive within new production models rather than be displaced by them. What Europe needs now is alignment: political, regulatory, financial, and institutional.

If the bioeconomy is to define Europe’s industrial future, then food must sit at its center - not at the periphery. A bioeconomy is not an abstract laboratory exercise or a policy construct; it is a living system that starts on farms, runs through fermentation tanks and biorefineries, and ultimately shapes the food cultures that define Europe itself.

The question now is whether Europe chooses to lead that system or adapt to decisions made elsewhere.