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Carbon Starvation – A Crisis Of Our Time?

September 8, 2021 Stuart Meikle

Are we beginning to see carbon – the fundamental building block of all life – as a pollutant? Instead of demonising carbon as a cause of climate breakdown, we need to restore balance in the natural carbon cycle that has been disrupted by the use of artificial fertilisers. In advance of his upcoming series on farming within planetary boundaries, Stuart Meikle offers a primer on the complex role of carbon in our soils. […]

Save Bees and Farmers! – European Citizens’ Initiative Must Reach 1 Million Signatures by September 30th

September 7, 2021 ARC

The European Citizens’ Initiative ‘Save Bees and Farmers!’ alliance – a network of civil society organisations in agriculture, health and environmental protection – is calling on the European Commission to propose legislation to phase out synthetic pesticides by 2035, to restore biodiversity, and to support farmers in the transition. […]

Civil Society Organisations Demand Open and Ambitious Approval of CAP Plans

September 1, 2021 ARC

The design and approval of the future 27 CAP Strategic Plans are key moments to demonstrate the true commitment towards a fairer, greener, and rural-proofed CAP reform. The European Commissioner for Agriculture, Mr Wojciechowski, promised ‘full transparency’ and ‘open dialogue beyond DG AGRI and agri-ministers’. Now ARC can reveal that a Joint Letter has been sent by civil society organisations to the Commission to put their promises in practice. […]

Bristol Bites Back | Fruits & Roots of Radical Resilience in South-West England

July 16, 2021 Ursula Billington

A new e-book published by ARC2020 documents one community’s inspiring response to the COVID-19 crisis. An antidote to the doom and gloom, “Bristol Bites Back: Fruits & Roots of Radical Resilience in South-West England” is tangible, practical proof that ecosystem-based approaches to food, farming and sustainability do indeed bear fruit for their patient protagonists – in some cases after decades of going against the grain of a productivist mindset. […]

Western Balkans | Balkan Rural Parliament Adopts Declaration

July 12, 2021 ARC

The second Balkan Rural Parliament took place last month in Ohrid, North Macedonia. The Declaration of the 2nd Balkan Rural Parliament is the major output of the forum which was organised by the Balkan Rural Development Network. […]

How to feed an Island? Japan and the German CAP Strategic Plan

June 27, 2021 Hans Wetzels

The Common Market Organization (CMO), insufficient grazing subsidies and eco-schemes. An explainer about how EU dairy exports could increase rural unemployment and food poverty in Japan. […]

Withdraw The CAP Movement Takes on Timmermans, Trilogues and Parliament Plenary

May 24, 2021 ARC

The Withdraw the CAP movement emerged in recent months to challenge Europe’s biggest policy spend. This initiative of young people, many climate strikers from the Fridays for Future movement, have taken the EU’s top brass to task over the gap between environmental rhetoric and business-as-usual reality. SO what happened at their meeting last with with Vice-President of the EU Commission Frans Timmermans, of EU Green Deal Fame. Here the group who met him give us the lowdown, and tell us what they are focused on next for withdraw the cap. […]

Letter From The Farm | Welcome to Ciasnocha Family Farm

May 24, 2021 Mateusz Ciasnocha

Welcome to Ciasnocha Family Farm – a 730 ha regenerative grassland farm in the Vistula delta of northern Poland. In his first Letter From The Farm, Mateusz Ciasnocha walks us through what’s involved throughout the year on his farm. But first, Mateusz gives us a whistlestop tour of the farm’s history over three generations, from Communism to CAP, and the transition to regenerative agriculture. […]

The True Cost of Britain’s Addiction to Factory-Farmed Chicken

May 14, 2021 ARC

The intensive poultry industry in the UK has expanded in recent decades, becoming more akin to the USA’s mega farms. Investigating how intensive poultry units have multiplied across certain parts of the UK, Alison Caffyn discovered that the poultry industry has taken advantage of weak regulatory and planning regimes to scale up the lucrative business. […]

Hidden Formulas and Agri-Media – Can we Find a Fair CAP in Ireland?

May 7, 2021 Matteo Metta

With EU CAP trilogue negotiations entering a critical, final phase, the Irish Department of Agriculture, Food, and the Marine has published the results of a modelling analysis on its official website. This analysis, published in April, attempts to estimate the effects of 85% internal convergence of direct payments by 2026. While the results have been used to make strident, fear-mongering statements in the farming press, the methods used to come to these conclusions remain unclear. And the conclusions may in fact be be quite different to what is being reported in the farming press in Ireland. […]

Agroecology Grows in Hungary

April 30, 2021 ARC

Agroecology is gaining more and more support from different actors around the world and is inspiring new collaborations such as the recently formed Hungarian Agroecology Network. The network was created 5 months ago and has already more than 60 active members from all over Hungary; among them farmers, representatives of producer and consumer groups, of NGOs and short supply chains, academics and researchers. Lili Balough has more. […]

CAP Strategic Plans: Germany Taking Steps in the Right Direction?

April 29, 2021 Sebastian Lakner

In March 2021, the German Agriculture Ministers’ Conference and the Federal Ministry for Food and Agriculture agreed on important cornerstones for the country’s CAP Strategic Plan. In his preliminary assessment, Sebastian Lackner shows that while the resolutions have opened the door for a more ambitious CAP in Germany, it remains to be seen whether the federal and state governments will seize the opportunity when they decide on details still to be negotiated. […]

Czech Republic | COPA No Longer Defends Interests of Majority of Czech Farmers

April 28, 2021 ARC

Frustrated time and again, the Czech Farmers Association has finally quit COPA. In this op-ed, Jaroslav Šebek, Jan Štefl and Jan Staněk argue that COPA is failing to listen to its members. For them, COPA’s handling of the capping of direct payments was the last straw. […]

Cut The Crap, Withdraw The CAP!

April 13, 2021 ARC

Climate striker Sommer Ackerman became active in protests for a better CAP in October 2020. She combines activism at EU level in the WithdrawTheCAP campaign with activism at national level to make agri-food policy change in Finland. […]

Time for US and EU to Regulate Factory Farms’ Greenhouse Gas Emissions

April 12, 2021 Ben Lilliston

The factory farm system used by global agribusiness firms is a major source of the greenhouse gas methane. Ben Lilliston and Shefali Sharma of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) highlight that the push for appropriate regulation of factory farms’ methane emissions in the U.S. should coincide with EU efforts to regulate these emissions. […]