Updates from EU Member States, including reports from ARC Web Correspondents
How can we get young people back onto the land, into rural areas and contributing to local culture and the local economy? There are many routes. Here’s one approach a couple who make cheese have taken in Brittany. […]
Farms have to be viable economically to survive and indeed thrive. Nevertheless, as the years pass, it’s worth thinking about how the farming life is lived. Stress, workload, debt – how do these impact on wellbeing? […]
In part two of this exclusive three parter on Spain’s internal CAP debate, Marta Zygadlo delves deeper into the substance of the position adopted by Spain with regard to the European Commission’s CAP consultation, focusing here on financing. […]
In this exclusive three part series, Marta Zygadlo – a lawyer in Spain working on food systems and food governance, explores the fascinating CAP debate in the Iberian country. Part one introduces the broad contours of the debate, including the Spanish government’s response document to the European Commission CAP consultation. […]
How can farmers, researchers and administrators work together to really preserve mountain grasslands, which are threatened with scrub encroachment and land abandonment? Dr. Ika Darnhofer outlines some findings from a recent paper Darnhofer and colleagues published. […]
Mainstream UK media have presented Brexit minister David Davis (left, without negotiating papers) as the public face of the country’s progress with Brexit talks. However, the press has studiously overlooked the back-room activities of the international trade minister Liam Fox, who has been rolling up his sleeves and starting to size up Tariff Rate Quotas (TRQs) held by the European Union at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). In an extraordinarily wide-reaching plan described as a “Technical Rectification”, Fox is planning to unilaterally carve out what he judges to be the UK’s share of TRQ tonnages for third country imports such as New Zealand sheepmeat and register the results with the WTO. The story emerged thanks to Sky News journalist Faisal Islam, but only because the TV chain was filming Fox in action at the WTO headquarters in Geneva. In the past, technical rectifications have been more limited in scope, but this editing is on an industrial scale: Fox is not waiting for Davis to get round to discussing trade with the European Commission before trying […]
As Brexit negotiations open, a report makes for worrying reading on the implications for food and farming. Interconnected problematic situations await the UK, yet there seems to be precious little of agri-food planning being done. Food Brexit: Time to Get Real Finds. […]
NGOs are urging a root and branch reform of agricultural policy to take the place of the CAP in the post-Brexit years. The Sustain alliance has published a four-part policy briefing. This is part two of our mini series presenting two scenarios from the UK for life #AfterCAP. […]
A silver lining in the Brexit cloud is that people can radically rethink how food, farming and the rural space operate in the UK. What will this mean for direct payments, for environmental regulations, for food security – and who will do the hard work of farming? Finally, is some of this blue sky thinking of interest to the rest of Europe? […]
Alan Matthews points out that given the pivotal importance of Germany in shaping the future CAP, it is worth paying attention to what the CDU/CSU coalition have to say about agriculture in its just announced programme for government for the German elections in September. […]
Progress is being made towards land access – and against land concentration – in the EU, with a consultation by the Finance Directorate General.You can read the DG FISMA consultation document and submit your own feedback. Closing date for submissions is very soon – the 7th July. […]
The UK is about to go into Brexit negotiations with a political maverick, Brexiteer Michael Gove, in charge of DEFRA. Here are are a few of his predecessors’ contributions to posterity: […]
Michael Gove has taken over in the UK ministry which covers agricultural, food, rural affairs and the environment. He was central to the Brexit push and has links to US Neocons including the Tea Party – so he doesn’t seem too keen on environmental regulations. By Miles King. […]
An important part of the recent European Rural Sustainability Gathering in Karditsa, Greece, was diverse set of field trips in the agricultural, economic and social spheres. These showcased some of the rural development initiatives in the Karditsa region – and how they are connected via an ecosystem of collaboration. Here we present a snapshot of the day. […]
Catch crops (68%), fallow land (16.2%) and nitrogen fixing crops (11.8%) dominated ecological focus areas (EFAs) in Germany in 2015. Why is this? What influences farmers’ decisions on EFAs? One of the authors of a new peer reviewed publication on this topic, ARC2020 regular Sebastian Lackner, summarises the paper, in which he and colleagues interviewed a range of experts on the matter. […]
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