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Latest from EU Member States

Fresh recruits for Growing Livelihoods

October 4, 2015 Peter Crosskey

The UK’s Growing Livelihoods scheme to foster smaller-scale food growing has added a further five projects to the pilot phase it launched last year. The new arrivals in the Growing Livelihoods family are Bristol’s Beacon Farms, the Cwm Harry Cultivate group in south Wales, Cloughmills Community Action Team in Northern Ireland, the Cornish Tamar Grow Local group and Falkland Small Growers in Fife. The Tamar Grow Local group will convert an agricultural building into a shared packhouse, meeting space and office. This will extend the existing support for new market gardeners, who will be able to work together and establish new routes to market. With the Falkland Estate earning organic certification in May this year, two new businesses have been set up to establish a network of local growers. Falkland Kitchen Farm and Meadowsweet Organics are part of a plan to share equipment and services such as marketing organic crops. Cloughmills Community Action Team is building a geodesic dome, like the Eden Project, in which hydroponic salad crops will be grown, alongside mushrooms raised on […]

Latest from EU Member States

Milk Price Plummet Sees Farmers Seething

July 28, 2015 Oliver Moore

Farmer protests are spreading around Europe, with six roads blockaded in France, along with food trucks carrying imported produce turned back. The UK is now seeing protests congest motorways there too. The A50 road protest has focused more on milk than the French protests. The UK’s largest farmer organisation the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), have not backed these occurrences. A spark in the UK was a further milk price drop. Arla Foods amba, a co-operative owned by 3000 diary farmers, announced yet another cut in price paid, reducing the standard litre price to 23.01 pence per litre, or about 32 euro cents. Dairy farmers are growing increasingly frustrated by the milk price crises. All across the EU, prices are plummeting. In Ireland, the price is 10-12 cent lower than the same time in 2014, typically 28c per litre from some companies, with similar stories  from Germany, Lithuania and elsewhere on the Continent. “We should have learned our lesson by now, but we keep producing ever more milk, anticipating Russia and China to re-enter the market, whilst farm-gate milk prices […]

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Does Food Sovereignty Starve the Poor and Punish the Planet?

July 20, 2015 ARC

by Gilles Billen, Luis Lassaletta and Josette Garnier Globalisation is not only a matter of clothing and mobile phones. Long-distance worldwide shipping of food commodities has also increased tremendously over the last few decades. Lassaletta et al.(2014) estimate that one-third of all proteins (a proxy for the nutritive potential of foodstuffs) produced globally are redistributed through international trade. Thus a recent study in France shows that the total volume of long distance commercial exchanges of food commodities, mostly originating from far away, account for over twice the national agricultural production (Le Noé et al., submitted). However, the positive value of a globalised food supply is being actively questioned. In industrialised countries, a citizens’ movement has arisen, sometimes supported by local public authorities, seeking to promote a local food supply. This movement aims to reclaim control of nutrition, re-create social links often destroyed by the extent of mass distribution, and develop the local economy. Developing countries are also attempting to strengthen their local food supply and recover part of their food sovereignty lost by decades of […]

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Europe’s Milk Crisis

June 30, 2015 ARC

While global issues inevitably influence milk price and dairy farmer viability, the end of the EU’s milk quota regime has made it especially challenging for small to medium sized dairy farmers to survive. The European Milkboard, a member of the ARC2020 platform, as well as others make sure we stay posted on the latest events. Press Release by the European Milk Board 30.06.2015 UPDATE: French version “En route vers l’agroécologie” now available! Click on “Transitioning Towards Agroecology”  for English and French. [show-map id=’1′] We reveal just how fair and green CAP 2014-2020 really is.

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Milk price drops threaten viability of small to medium sized producers

June 28, 2015 Oliver Moore

While global issues inevitably influence milk price and dairy farmer viability, the end of the EU’s milk quota regime has made it especially challenging for small to medium sized dairy farmers to survive.  Milk prices are below 30 cents per litre in many countries. Small to medium sized producers inevitably suffer with such a sudden price drop. For some, increasing acreage and expanding production by going further into debt is the only solution. But this is only a solution for the few, while also having social, environmental and economic consequences for Europe, and rural Europe in particular. According to the Milk Market Observatory’s milk market bulletin from June 2015 “The weighted EU average farm gate milk price decreased in April 2015 by 0.8% to 31.3 c/kg, which is 18% lower than in April 2014 and 6% lower than the average of the last 5 years.” Developments in China and the Russian food embargo have also shaped the price drop. As the Western Daily Express reported on 10th June, this crisis has an impact on real people. Mark Oliver, […]

Latest from Brussels

ttip: EP vote postponed – US Congress rejects fast track

June 12, 2015 Oliver Moore

BREAKING (12/06/2015, 20.30 hrs): House Rejects Trade Bill, Rebuffing Obama’s Dramatic Appeal First comment from IATP: Following months of intense public opposition to Fast Track, the House of Representatives today defied the Obama administration’s trade promotion package. The debate over Fast Track blurred party lines. “It took real courage for those Democrats and Republicans who stood up to the President and Republican leadership and opposed the free trade package. They defended working families, farmers, natural resources, the environment and most importantly, democratic principles,” says Juliette Majot, President of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP). “This is a clear rejection of the free trade agenda that favors big business over workers, farmers, consumers, and our environment. It’s time to bury this failed approach. I just hope the administration is really listening to what was said today, and what citizens groups around the world have been saying for years. We need very different rules that enhance local economies and jobs and advance efforts to rebuild our food system so it is fair and sustainable,” according […]

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CAP reform towards 2020: Pillar 1 direct payments implementation by EU Member States

April 28, 2015 ARC

In the CAP reform deal agreed in June 2013, both Council and Parliament have supported greater flexibilities for implementing Pillar 1 new direct payment schemes. As a result for some, the CAP would seem to be less “common” and be more “à la carte”. However, since the 2003 reform had already introduced a phasing-in agenda for decoupled payments, CAP is already implemented through differentiated schemes among the MS. With the 2013 reform, many new schemes aiming at improving the direct aids targeting are mandatory (greening, young farmers) while other are facultative (i.e. optional) (coupled payments, payments for areas with natural constraints, small farmers scheme). Only their implementation modalities can be adjusted: upsizing or at the contrary downsizing the redistribution of CAP money among farmers according to national/regional priorities. Whether the CAP reform has been decided by 28 Member States (MS) and the European Parliament, it will been applied within 32 EU territorial constituencies. In the UK, regional jurisdictions will apply the CAP reform according to their distinctive boundaries in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England. […]