Latest from key partners Archives - Page 5 of 17 - Agricultural and Rural Convention

New IAASTD+10 Book – Transforming Our Food Systems

September 24, 2020 ARC

A critical new book released today (24th September) by United Nations’ World Agriculture Report (IAASTD) members calls for an accelerated transformation of our food systems. The authors, including ARC2020’s Benny Haerlin, point to the need for a paradigm shift in the perception of the global food system, incorporating agroecology. Here we feature an op-ed by Katharine Earley. […]

Insect Atlas: Europe’s Killing Fields

September 21, 2020 ARC

In Europe’s killing fields, the biggest driver of insect decline is monoculture-dominated and pesticide-reliant industrial agriculture. The EU should channel the billions it spends on CAP to support climate- and insect-friendly farming practices, argue Sandra Bell, Barbara Unmüßig and Jagoda Munić. […]

Your Land, My Land, Our Land: Using International Legal Tools

September 10, 2020 ARC

It’s now easier than ever to use international tools to fight for access to land. By crafting a strategy and tooling up with the right legislation, social movements and civil society organisations can achieve wins for land rights — as we can learn from the Sami people’s historic victory earlier this year, write Astrid Bouchedor, Attila Szocs, Philip Seufert, and Fernando García-Dory. […]

Combating The Financialisation Of Agriculture: Your Land, My Land, Our Land

July 7, 2020 ARC

With farms increasingly forced to go big or go broke, corporate interests are stepping in to shape agriculture. More transparency, participative decision-making, and CAP reform are among the tools that can be leveraged to combat the scourge of financialisation, write Robert Levesque, Tanguy Martin and Véronique Rioufol. […]

Latest from key partners

Working Document on “A Vision and Strategy for Rural Europe – Now.”

July 6, 2020 ARC

A just and sustainable Europe will not be possible without rural considerations being properly integrated into the plans for Covid-19 recovery, for CAP and for the EU Green Deal. We invite you to read our draft working document on a vision and strategy for rural Europe, and then work with us to further develop and refine it, in the days, weeks and months ahead. Together we ourselves must develop our way of working together, to present a coherent voice to represent rural Europe. […]

Milking The Planet: How Big Dairy Is Heating Up The Planet And Hollowing Rural Communities

July 6, 2020 Shefali Sharma

Big Dairy’s greenhouse gas emissions are increasing, but the corporations responsible are not being held to account. Meanwhile consolidation in the dairy industry is squeezing smaller operators and hurting rural communities. It’s time to hold agribusiness accountable for its climate footprint, argues Shefali Sharma in a new report from the Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy. […]

Resistance Is Fertile: Your Land, My Land, Our Land

July 1, 2020 ARC

How can grassroots organisations tackle the issue of land access? What strategies and legal tools are available to them, and what real-life examples have worked? In this excerpt from the comprehensive toolkit recently published by Nyéléni Europe and Central Asia platform for Food Sovereignty, the authors note that despite the challenges, resistance is fertile – and present a range of tools that land activists can use to fight for a fairer world. […]

Species Extinction & the Case for a Global Moratorium on Gene Drives

June 14, 2020 ARC

Stop Gene Drives is a campaign to prevent future releases of gene drive organisms into the environment in Germany, Europe and worldwide. In this op-ed, Head of Campaign Mareike Imken makes the case for a global moratorium on the release of gene drive organisms – before it is too late. […]

Alternatives to Rural Right-Wing Populist Europe – Part II

May 7, 2020 Natalia Mamonova

In the second instalment of a two-part series on populism and rural Europe, Natalia Mamonova shares her insights on populist strategies in the countryside, food sovereignty as a counterforce to these dangerous trends, and the impact the coronavirus crisis is having on right-wing populist movements and rural transformations. […]

Alternatives to Rural Right-Wing Populist Europe

May 6, 2020 Natalia Mamonova

Populism has become a powerful political force in Europe. The current wave of populist movements has seeped through the European countryside from France to Sweden to Poland. Yet despite the emergence of resistance and alternatives to populism, the political debate continues to overlook rural Europe. In the first of a two-part series Natalia Mamonova shares her insights into why populism is having a moment in rural areas. […]

IPES-Food on Covid-19: Protect the Vulnerable, Build Resilience, Stay Vigilant

April 17, 2020 Louise Kelleher

The Covid-19 pandemic has put our food systems to the test, exposing the vulnerabilities of an unsustainable status quo. In a communiqué released on Tuesday, IPES-Food slams shortsighted solutions to the crisis. Calling for a paradigm shift to agroecological farming, it says now is the time to transform the seeds of change into the foundations of a resilient new food system. Industrial food systems are being peddled as solutions when in fact they are the problem. Louise Kelleher reports. […]

Whoever does not have Peasants, Should find Them: The Food Injustice of Pandemics

April 16, 2020 ARC

European Coordination of Via Campesina’s call to join the#StayHomeButNotSilent call to action on April 17 to commemorate the International Day of Peasant Struggle, reiterates the fundamental role of peasants in feeding people, even in the most difficult times. It takes a crisis for alternative food systems to emerge. Is our food system, dominated by trade ideology instead of human rights, ready to face pandemics? […]

Coping with Covid19 – Mutual Aid and Local Responses in a time of Coronavirus

April 14, 2020 Oliver Moore

There is a spectrum of possible responses to this unfolding crisis. Here we’ll briefly introduce some small and also larger mutual aid initiatives, or local and community responses to covid19 and what it brings out in people – from street to municipal levels, from rural to border areas. […]

For the Sake of Nature and the Climate, Europe must not CAP its Ambitions

April 9, 2020 ARC

The European Commission continues to describe the Common Agricultural Policy as “ambitious”, yet its own evaluation of the CAP’s impact reveals that the farm subsidy scheme is inflicting massive damage on Europe’s biodiversity, water resources and nature. In this in-depth feature, Célia Nyssens of the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) explains why the CAP is not fit for purpose and outlines how it can be reformed. […]

Poking Holes in Farm to Fork: Small Farmers have Solutions

March 28, 2020 Hans Wetzels

Farm to Fork is the European Commission’s strategy to support an EU-wide transition to sustainable food production. The Roadmap for the new strategy was open for public consultation until last week. In the final instalment in this three-part series covering feedback on Farm to Fork so far, we look at comments from farmers and agricultural organizations. Hans Wetzels reports. […]