ARC Newsflash – September 2014

Dear friends and supporters,
Welcome to our September newsletter! As Autumn and the political season kick into gear once again, we’re helping build agroecological solutions to the business as usual model of food production. Three of Arc2020’s team are out and about promoting this work in September. Samuel Feret will showcase a poster on agroecology at the FAO’s seminar in Rome; Oliver Moore is presenting abut our agroecology approach and project at the European Organic Congress in Bari, while Robert Pederson has just attended the University of Copenhagen agroecology conference.We at Arc2020 see agroecology as holistic – it encompasses not just more environmentally benign production inputs, practices and processes: it is about stronger people-nature connectivity throughout the food system. It is about shorter distribution chains. It is about science, farmers and activists coming together to do food differently, in a way which is in keeping with the carrying capacity of the planet and with the real human need for connection.Some highlights from August:

Agritourism in Romania

The Original CSA? exclusive Arc2020 Interview with Ryoko Shimizo of Japan’s SEIKATSU

UK taps into Agroecology research

Ireland Improves Payments & Options for Organic Farmers

Moldova: East or West, Capitalism Defines its Socio-Economic Terrain

UK accepts industry money for Neonic research

Don’t forget we have a regularly updated newsticker (TTIP, organic farming, organic food nutrition, GMOs, the Allan Savory livestock debacle and antibiotics featured recently), the 2000m² project, and we are very active on both facebook and twitter. Do join in on our conversations – we’d love to hear from you!

Dr. Oliver Moore – oliver@arc2020.euCommunications ManagerLuise Körner – communication@arc2020.eu

Communications team

 

TTIP:already disrupting Europe’s precautionary principle?

TTIP is allowing decision makers to put short term profits and growth ahead of long term goals of health and well-being of people and ecosystems. It is being used to iron out differences in regulations and rules between the US and EU, under the mantra of “the least trade restrictive rules work”, without due consideration of the public health, societal and environmental costs. Current work on legislation regarding Endocrine Disruptors (ED)1 and how this potentially will be undermined by TTIP is a prime example of how short term profits are being given priority over people and the environment.More:Find the detailed analysis in this post on Arc2020.

See Arc2020 Food Policy Co-ordinator Robert Pederson’s abridged version on EurActiv

See our briefing notes and all our TTIP news

 

Shooting in the strawberry fields: a Greek Tragedy

“I feel shame as a Greek. This decision is inhumane, shameful and a disgrace for the greek justice“, The victim’s lawyer stated outside the court. On July 30th a Greek court chose to announce the acquittal of four farmers who shot and wounded over two dozen immigrant strawberry pickers. Among the charges the owner of the farm had been accused was human trafficking. The outrageous incident occurred last year in the strawberry growing area of Peloponnese. There 200 foreign fruit pickers protested as they have not received 6 months wages. More than 30 Bangladeshi were wounded after three foremen opened fire. Read the full report by ARC2020 here.

 

Community Supported Agriculture

In partnership with our Friends of the Earth colleagues from around Europe, CAP information events, tours, farmers’ markets and more activities are being organised within our joint agroecology project. This month we featured 2 articles on Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in the Czech Republic and Bulgaria with more to follow. CSA is built on the relationship between food producers and consumers, who share the harvest and carry the risk of crop failure as well. The main goal of CSA is local production and consumption of food and support of environmentally and socially responsible farming.

Learn more about the farmers and consumers who already work on bringing new and sustainable ways of agriculture into practice and how to get involved yourself on our website.

 

Upcoming Events and Policy Dates

September 3-4 EP Agriculture Committee Meeting, Brussels, Belgium

September 3-4 EP Environment Committee Meeting, Brussels, Belgium

September 10-12 European Organic Congress Bari Italy

September 18-19 International symposium on agroecology for food and nutrition security FAO HQ Rome Italy

September 18-21 European Rural Sustainability Gathering, Beaufortain, France

September 26-29 Collaboration between Producers and Consumers, Santiago de Compostela, Spain

October 13-14 Agriculture and Fisheries Council Meeting, Luxembourg

Find all events listed on ARC2020 here.

 

CAP Greening: Ireland opts for path of least resistance

If you’d like to see just how to avoid making any significant environmental improvement, despite being compliant with the new green reformed CAP (!) take a look at this feature on Irish Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney. In his comments to the Irish Parliament (Dáil). It truly was a masterclass in avoidance of the kind of changes citizens have been yearning for.

“The idea of greening is that Pillar 1 of the CAP  – the main part of CAP, which focuses primarily on production  – will have  specific environmental measures built in. These measures are permanent grassland, crop diversification and ecological focus areas. So how is Ireland performing? What has the Irish Minister Simon Coveney opted for to justify single farm payments?”

Feature continues