Updates from EU Member States, including reports from ARC Web Correspondents
33,000 citizens – including 160 tractor driving farmers – made their way through the winter streets of Berlin on Saturday to tell the world – food is political! #EssenIstPolitisch […]
The platform Pour une autre PAC (For Another Common Agricultural Policy) is a French inter-association body created for a common reflection and action regarding the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy. In this exclusive for ARC2020, platform coordinator Auréile Catallo introduces its history, its composition and its functioning. […]
Agroecology is commonly understood as a science, a movement, and a practice, jointly transforming agroecosystems to less fossil fuel dependent, more autonomous and more resilient farming systems. Agroecologic practices and research have evolved and are being applied around the globe. What unites these movements, what separates them? How is it different in Europe compared to Latin America? Is there a universal approach to agroecology? […]
UK Ag minister Micheal Gove has claimed Brexit is a golden opportunity to create an independent, public goods focused national agri-food policy. This policy position has been praised by many, from environmentalists to the NFU. However, is he speaking with a forked tongue? And if not, then what might this potentially radical rupture signal for the EU and CAP? […]
The Yorkshire Dales is an upland area of Yorkshire, Northern England. Agriculture has been an integral part of the area’s culture and economy for thousands of years. A hill farm agricultural system is upheld here, with sheep as the primary livestock, although many have diversified into mixed beef systems, and dairy operations in the lower valleys. How has CAP – and its changes over time – impacted on this place and its people? […]
Here Frank Armstrong ponders how different the rural west of Ireland was – and can be again – through the medium of food production. Family excursions, a mid century self-help co-op movement, which used horticulture as a vehicle for change, and the future of food production all feature. […]
CAP’s way to address diverse rural spaces under a broad policy umbrella has many shortcomings, including the discrimination against wood pastures as eligible land for direct payments. This impacts pastoralists and the landscape negatively. So will this be addressed by the new reform of the CAP? Or has something else emerged which might actually act as a tool for change? by Flora Sonkin. […]
This long read by Frank Armstrong gives a background into what he calls the livestock industrial complex. Part history, part contemporary agri-food overview, part health and environmental case and part personal note, this article is speaks of power and how it operates in different spheres. These include politics, media and nutritional advice, all through the prism of livestock farming in Ireland. […]
Automation and digitisation are rising in farming and the broader agri-food sector. Germany – industrial powerhouse of Europe – seems an obvious place to embrace AGTech. From precision farming and data ownership to embodied energy and cost, what are the opportunities, the impacts and the implications? And how are agroecologists responding? […]
How realistic is the Green Party demand in the current coalition talks for an agricultural turn, including the phase out of factory farming in 20 years? In the land of the near ubiquitous bratwurst, main ingredient in Germany’s’ number one fast food currywurst, how strong is the undercurrent of opposition to factory farmed pork and poultry? […]
As part of our RETHINK Modernisation series, we present an article on governance mechanisms. This article explores new organisational forms, roles and partners, while presenting six vital conditions for success. […]
Three quarters of all flying insects in Germany have disappeared in just 27 years, according to a study published in one of the world’s leading scientific journals, PLoS One. What are the details are what may be to blame? […]
A new European community-led local development fund, comprising 10% of four current EU funds, is one of the specific suggestions to come out of the 3rd European Rural Parliament. […]
On 12th October, the European Commission issued guidance for EU Member States on protecting agricultural land from threats such as excessive price speculation and ownership concentration. But does it go far enough? […]
Over 200,000 European Citizens have signed an ECI petition calling on the EU to protect its soil. What does this mean, and what might happen next? […]
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