Updates from EU Member States, including reports from ARC Web Correspondents
The aim of the 4pour1000 initiative (4per1000 in English) is to increase carbon in the soil by 0.04%. This could help halt the annual increase in Co2 in the atmosphere. The initiative is seeking expert comments on biological soil indicators by 15th March. Mario Cattizone has more […]
Yiorgos Psychas is member of a grassroots network in Greece called Iliosporoi (sunflower seed) working towards social, political and ecological transition in rural and urban areas of Greece. ARC2020’s Hannes Lorenzen spoke with Yiorgos. […]
18,000 people took to the streets of Berlin on 21 January 2017. Together they demonstrated for healthy food, a more rural and ecological farming and fair trade. Farmers from all across Germany joined the demonstration. […]
Tom Lancaster, Senior Agriculture Policy Officer at the UK’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) assesses the uncertain terrain of the UK, farm subsidies and public goods post Brexit. In doing so, some interesting considerations emerge for the EU too. […]
Sebastian Lanker and Rainer Oppermann explain how CAP is failing environmentally, before outlining specific budget neutral proposals, including for sustainability and agri-nature payments. […]
In David Attenborough’s foreword to The State of Nature 2016, he writes: “…Nature is in serious trouble and it needs our help as never before.” The report singles out intensive agriculture and climate change as the two most serious threats to biodiversity in the UK. Agriculture still occupies 75% of the UK’s land area and the declining fortunes of mixed farming has led to consolidation and specialisation on a massive scale at landscape level. It is hardly surprising then, that the environmental impact of farming should be an issue of public concern. Look at this picture of a field with an over-wintered crop above: it is typical of thousands up and down the UK. Beneath the serried ranks of seedlings, criss-crossed with tracks that reflect the width of the spraying boom which passes periodically, countless farmland species struggle to adapt to what is often a hostile environment. The State of Nature editorial team identify earlier planting and regular spraying as important underlying factors in the way intensive farming impacts biodiversity. The study draws on long […]
In what is a fast moving a still fluid situation, it appears the Walloon administration in Belgium may have made CETA signing conditional on a significant change – the international court element to the treaty may now, it appears, be subject to European Court scrutiny. […]
New data from Lower Saxony on the registration of ecological focus area (EFA) for 2016 are published. The data shows almost no changes: The EFA is still an expensive measure for taxpayers with little positive impact on biodiversity. Sebastian Lanker gives ARC2020 this exclusive on the topic. […]
Barry Finnegan of ATTAC Ireland explains how Ireland’s upper house voted – by a single ballot – against CETA last week. He also points to the wider implications of this (albeit) non-binding vote – the first of its kind in an EU member state parliament. […]
UK prime minister Theresa May addressed he political party, the ruling Conservative party, at their conference at the start of the month. She tried to reassure the warring factions of that party that her plans for Brexit were on track. It’s clear she favours a hard – that’s complete – break from the EU, and not a soft – that’s partial – separation. […]
Pesticide victims Laurent Guillou and Stéphane Rouxel have won their cases against former employer Nutréa-Triskalia. The former employees at the Plouisy site of the giant Breton agricultural cooperative Triskalia suffered acute exposures to pesticides in 2009 and 2010. They suffer from hypersensitivity to everyday household chemicals (MCS), a condition that has also been recorded among Gulf war veterans. The decision by the Tribunal des Affaires de Sécurité Sociale (TASS) at Saint Brieuc to award damages to pesticide victims is the first of its kind to recognise MCS in the French justice system. After years of legal battles, their accusations that the massive use of pesticides in food production is an environmental and health scandal are being vindicated. Read: Pesticides – Did Co-op’s Practices Lead to Cancers? MCS is a debilitating condition: in the soundtrack of a campaign video [Paroles-de-Plouisy], Rouxel recounts that in his case it can be triggered by something as trivial as encountering people wearing perfume or after shave. The effects can come hours or days later and include severe headaches as well […]
Community Supported Agriculture network Urgenci held their 3rd European CSA meeting last weekend in Ostrava, Czech Republic. See here for the Declaration, as adopted, in full. […]
![Base map by Llywelyn2000 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://www.arc2020.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/500px-264px-glomel-featured-no-caption-326x245.png)
A father and son team allege shoddy pesticide disposal practices from the past are implicated in their respective cancers. In an English language exclusive, Peter Crosskey has the story. […]
A fascinating power play is emerging in France around pesticides. Some noteworthy and challenging pesticide reduction policies policies, such as Ecophyto 2, have emerged. Meanwhile, major politicians are clashing and occasionally out flanking each other. Peter Crosskey unpacks the story for us, in an exclusive article. […]
Part two of a two part series on mechanical and other non-chemical weed management techniques. By Oliver Moore […]
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