Latest from key partners Archives - Agricultural and Rural Convention

Germany | Communications for Sustainable Food Systems – Bringing everyone along

June 28, 2024 ARC

In Marburg, Germany kollektiv von MORGEN (the collective of TOMORROW) is working with food education activists and other food system stakeholders to develop regional communication strategies around sustainable food. Building on ideas formulated at the European Action-Gathering for Sustainable Food Systems last November, participants of a recent workshop continued to shape plans for the region. […]

Op-Ed – The Solution to Free Half of European Arable Land from Pesticides

May 29, 2024 ARC

In this op-ed, Annemarie Botzki of FoodWatch International makes the case, and outlines a vision, for how European farms can to exit pesticides, crop by crop. […]

Land Grabbing is Back – This Time Risks are Even Greater

May 24, 2024 ARC

Fifteen years on from the ‘land rush’, a multi-pronged global land squeeze is forcing farmers and communities off the land – and Europe has a key role to play in fixing it. […]

Feeding Ourselves 2024 – Unpacking Protest, Agroecology and Local Food Economies in Ireland

March 1, 2024 ARC

From March 21st – 24th, Feeding Ourselves is an opportunity for people and organisations working to strengthen local food economies and build a movement for agroecology, food sovereignty and rural resilience to convene and collaborate. […]

Remote Control and Peasant Intelligence – excerpt

January 15, 2024 ARC

“Remote Control and Peasant Intelligence – on automating decisions, suppressing knowledges and transforming ways of knowing” takes a critical perspective on new developments in the farming sphere. It focuses on the impact on peasant farming of digitisation, data gathering and management, technologisation, automation, approaches to regulation and corporate control. It also puts forward a food sovereignty and peasant agroecology perspective on digital technologies. […]

Who will Deliver the Science and Research for a Sustainable Food System?

December 20, 2023 William Burns

Who will deliver the science and research we need to support a sustainable food system? Currently, across Europe, we see that relevant R&D&E is done by an underfunded patchwork of institutions and definitely at an inadequate scale given the challenge. […]

Mind The Gap! Sustainable Food Systems Need Intergenerational Cooperation

November 29, 2023 ARC

Generations have different perceptions of time. While the elder generation looks back at their achievements, failures and lessons learnt, the younger generation projects their ambitions into the future and tries to grasp the unknown. Understanding each other’s needs and qualities is therefore often lost in non-communication, but it’s needed more than ever. […]

We Can’t Eat Promises! Good Food Good Farming month culminates in Brussels protest

November 20, 2023 ARC

“We can’t eat promises!” – The slogan of the Good Food Good Farming protest for a better food system, which took place in Brussels on November 8, 2023. The protest was the culmination of the Good Food Good Farming October Action Days, and highlighted the urgent need for transformative agri-food policies to realise key aspects of the EU’s Farm to Fork Strategy. […]

Sustainable Food Systems cannot be postponed! – From the Marburg Gathering

November 20, 2023 ARC

Photo essay reporting back from the Marburg Rural Action Gathering in November. While the eagerly awaited Marburg Action Plan for Future-proof Food Systems is in the works, here’s a glimpse into the achievements made during this dynamic event. […]

Seeds, New GMOs & Food Policy Councils – Diversity Event Comes to Dublin

October 31, 2023 Oliver Moore

The 12th Forum of the European Coordination of Let’s Liberate Diversity, held in the Irish capital, drew over 100 participants from all over Europe and beyond, including Minister of State at the Irish Department of Agriculture, Pippa Hackett. The importance of agrobiodiversity, of food policy councils and the risks of the proposed European seed marketing proposal emerged as key themes from a vibrant event held in Dublin last week. […]

Op-ed | The Bizarre Concept of “Non-Productive Trees”

June 26, 2023 Gerry Lawson

Ahead of tomorrow’s vote on the Nature Restoration Law at the Environment Committee in the European Parliament, the European Agroforestry Federation (EURAF) is calling for amendments to the proposal. In this exclusive Op-Ed for ARC, Gerry Lawson flags the proposal’s confusing choice of terminology which, he argues, fails to reflect the complex role of trees on farmland. […]

Reconnect With Beans – Take Our Food Power Back

May 9, 2023 ARC

If we all agree to take back the power over our food, what do we need? Helping to frame the discussion at the Global Bean Seed Festival, Xavier Hamon, artisan cook and partner of the Rural Resilience project, encourages us to re-cultivate hundreds of varieties of grains and pulses, take back land, win political mandates, and most of all, support those who work for the living world, day after day. Words : Xavier Hamon. […]

Strengthening Multifunctional Agriculture through Digitalisation: Insights from Europe and Japan

April 27, 2023 Matteo Metta

We are told today that agriculture and rural areas are living through a pervasive digital transformation. But will digitalisation reverse the current productivism model or perpetuate it? At 72nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Regional Agricultural and Forestry Economics (ARAFE), Matteo Metta presented his insights on digital agriculture from the rural perspectives. The hybrid event took place last 23 October 2022 at the Ryukoku University (Kyoto, Japan) and touched upon key issues, global trends and local realities in agri, food, and rural transformations. […]

Sustainable Food Systems Law – EU Food Policy Coalition’s Recommendations for a Meaningful Transition

April 25, 2023 ARC

As the European Commission prepares for the launch of its proposal on the Sustainable Food Systems (SFS) Legislative Framework in late September, the EU Food Policy Coalition has published a joint report laying out clear policy recommendations for the SFS Law to ensure a meaningful transition to sustainable food systems across the European Union. Summary and report to download here. […]

Why Legumes are Necessary for Agroecological Transition

November 23, 2022 ARC

What role for legumes in the agroecological transition? And what is bulatura? Here, author and researcher Lucia Nicastro interviews two farmers – Stefano Vegetabile of Nuove Rotte. Andrea Giaccardi, of l’Orto del Pian Bosco – about how and why they integrate legumes into their farming systems. […]