Recent updates Archives - Page 25 of 86 - Agricultural and Rural Convention

Regional Rural Responses – Reimagined.

December 14, 2020 Alison Brogan

As the pandemic collides with inequality and the ecological emergencies, fresh approaches to building resilient local food economies are emerging. Innovative communities are experimenting with ways to shorten, amplify and democratise supply chains. ARC2020, Cultivate and Forum Synergies came together to organise a webinar where pioneering community-led initiatives operating at the regional level, with the aim of encouraging the replication, scaling up and scaling across of these approaches. […]

soup and talk meeting about agri-food Berlin

Soup and Talk 2021 – Tell the World about Your Good Food Initiative!

December 14, 2020 ARC

Running since 2011, Wir Haben Es Satt (WHES) has become Europe’s biggest gathering against industrial farming and for a fair and agroecological and food systems transformation. 2021 will see a unique iteration of WHES, with many activities happening digitally. With much of the action online, this also means that people all over the world can now join in. Here we introduce a core part of WHES, Soup & Talk 2021, which ARC2020 is helping coordinate. […]

UK | More Than A Million Families Will Be Struck Into Poverty This Christmas

December 14, 2020 ARC

In the world’s fifth-richest country, one in five people still go hungry, and the UK’s post Covid scheme will leave many out in the cold. Migrants are among the groups who are starving as they have no recourse to public funds, reports Harriet Morphy-Morris. […]

The Common Agriculture Policy and Sustainable Farming: A statement by scientists (December 2020)

December 8, 2020 ARC

40 scientific experts have come together today to release a paper on the role CAP plays in trying to make farming sustainable. Below we republish the summary of this paper, and provide a link to download the paper in full. Led by Guy Pe’er, and including our own Matteo Metta, the paper is critical of both the initial CAP proposal by the Commission from 2018, and more critical again of the positions taken by the Council and Parliament in October 2020. Important reading in the current trilogue context. […]

Ireland | Wake Up and Smell the Ammonia

December 7, 2020 Alison Brogan

In Ireland, dangerous levels of ammonia emissions are driven largely by the burgeoning cattle population. Yet policymakers are turning a blind eye to the link between ammonia pollution and the expanding national herd. The evidence shows that Ireland is pursuing growth in the agri-food sector at the expense of air quality, biodiversity and human health, reports Alison Brogan. […]

CAP, Interrupted – So Withdraw the CAP!

December 3, 2020 Oliver Moore

As trilogues to decide the future of CAP progress behind closed doors, the business-as-usual lobby is fighting its corner with some level of exacerbation. They are annoyed with the Commission, with the scientific community, and with young people in the decision-making corridors. Fridays for Future and a host of civil society stakeholders want the Commission to Withdraw the CAP, and the case for doing just this is mounting, as the chasm between the European Green Deal and CAP widens. […]

PAN Europe Reveals: Member States Act Against EU Pesticide Reduction

December 3, 2020 ARC

The way forward is for farmers to embrace the ecological transition that the European Green Deal is proposing and to use Integrated Past Management to work with – not against – nature. But a number of Member States are actively working against pesticide reduction, reveals Pesticide Action Network Europe. […]

UK | Why “Buy British” Won’t Feed the Nation – Part 2

December 1, 2020 Anoushka Zoob Carter

In post-Brexit Britain, the new Agriculture Bill is exposing the fault lines between environmental conservation, neoliberal trade deals, and the future of small-scale farming. In part two of this series, Anoushka Zoob Carter explores the phenomenon of technological nationalism in post-CAP politics, and the conflicts it is generating between advocates of rural renewal and of an emancipatory rural politics. […]

CAP | Time for Commission to Get Real on Spending, Say Auditors

November 22, 2020 Louise Kelleher

The EU spends a lot on CAP – almost 40% of its annual budget. But are these billions of euros delivering results? In a new report, the European Court of Auditors find the Commission is “overly optimistic” on the performance of CAP spending and needs to focus on the real impacts. It also confirms that 80% of direct payments are going to 20% of beneficiaries. Louise Kelleher reports. […]

ARC2020 Event | Local Food – Reimagining Regional Responses

November 20, 2020 Alison Brogan

Join us on December 9th at 17:00 CET for a participatory web conference on ‘Local Food – Reimagining Regional Responses’. In partnership with Forum Synergies and Cultivate, ARC2020 is co-organising this online event which will present collaborative approaches to building rural resilience, and consider how we can progress agri-food movements from the local level to the regional. […]

Belgium | The Hidden Cost of Food Waste Redistribution

November 20, 2020 Natasha Foote

Redistributing food waste is surely a win for the environment and for society. So why is it such an uphill struggle? In the Belgian capital, a project called ‘Feed the culture’ helps out workers in the arts sector who are struggling to put food on the table because of the COVID-19 closures. Natasha Foote speaks to the volunteers on the ground in Brussels. […]

UK | Old and New: Somerset’s Regenerative Renaissance

November 19, 2020 Ursula Billington

Livestock farmers Jen and Andy of Fernhill Farm in Somerset, England have been practicing regenerative agriculture since before they had a name for it. Twenty years ago their “extensive nomadic ways” were dismissed as too traditional; now it’s clear these pioneers of sustainable agroecology were ahead of their time. Ursula Billington tells us more. […]

Poland | Drowning in Algae: Dead Zones in the Baltic Sea

November 18, 2020 Hans Wetzels

Marine life in the Baltic Sea is drowning in algae. Largely to blame is nutrient run-off from intensive pig producers, thanks to a model of factory farming largely unchecked by EU regulations. Experts are calling for closed nutrient cycles to combat eutrophication – and engaging with the polluters to find solutions. Hans Wetzels reports from Poland. […]

UK | What’s in the New Agriculture Act?

November 12, 2020 ARC

The era of direct payments in the UK is ending. Farm policy in the UK just took a step forward into the post CAP era this week with the royal assent on the Agriculture Bill. Now an Act of parliament, it represents a pretty radical new approach to farm support – paying farmers for the public goods or benefits they provide. […]

UK | Why “Buy British” Won’t Feed the Nation

November 12, 2020 Anoushka Zoob Carter

Brexit and the Covid crisis have yielded easy pickings for the far right. In the first of a two-part series, Anoushka Zoob Carter unpacks how new forms of nationalism are exploiting a broken food and farming system. […]