Latest from key partners

Seeds For Hope On Pellworm Island

Seeds for hope were sown this summer at the Seeds4all seminar, when cereal farmers and breeders from several countries gathered on the island of Pellworm in July to discuss the future of local organic seed production. Off the German coast in the North Sea, Pellworm faces its own challenges as an island below sea level. In this weirdly rainy and burning summer, it was a fitting location for talk of sustainability and resilience. Report by Seeds4all. […]

Latest from EU Member States

Ireland’s Our Rural Future – a rural digitisation gold standard? 

Broadband for all, even in the most remote regions; smart, revitalised villages and towns with hundreds of remote working hubs; a rural youth assembly, significant numbers of public and private workers for rural areas; Local Digital Strategies in administrative regions; and all done in a well-planned way to optimize synergies and transition towards carbon neutrality –  it sound like a sustainable rural digitalisation dream. So is it?  […]

Main stories

Agroforestry and CAP – all Talk, no Trees

Agroforestry is positively highlighted in many adopted texts and directives from Brussels and is also mentioned in the framework of the CAP and proposed as a possible measure of the Eco-Schemes. Despite its undisputed benefits, it is still largely unknown. What’s more surprising is that the current process of CAP strategic plans seems to virtually overlook it – so is it all spin, no substance?  Andrea Beste has more. […]

Latest from the ARC network

Farming Bounded By Our Biological Boundaries – Part 2

Despite the climate change mitigation emphasis on carbon sequestration, building soil carbon is first about food security, second about atmospheric carbon drawdown. By working with nature’s natural cycles to provide nutritious food with a low environmental footprint, Regenerative Agriculture will provide the transition from fossil-fuelled agro-chemistry to utilizing the farm’s natural resources, argues Stuart Meikle in the second part of this series. […]

Rural Resilience

Extrait de livre | Survivre en dessous du niveau de la mer

Inutile de vivre sur une île située au-dessous du niveau de la mer pour comprendre que le changement climatique et l’élévation du niveau des mers vont vous changer la vie. Toutefois, les conflits croissants entre ‘le statu quo’ et la nature menacée apparaissent plus nettement dans un petit endroit reculé comme Pellworm. Les relations conflictuelles entre l’homme et la nature y sont plus perceptibles ; les limites imposées aux ressources et aux entreprises, plus coûteuses. Dans cet extrait du livre, Hannes LORENZEN, président de l‘association ARC2020, raconte l‘histoire de son île natale, un territoire fort en résilience.  […]

Latest from EU Member States

Farm Specialisation or Diversification?

Here we publish a short extract on farm diversification from the recent Feeding Ourselves Policy Document. In this piece, Matteo Metta widens the focus of diversification, while also addressing some blind spots on data gaps and value adding. For more from Matteo and many others, download the full report in the article.  […]

Latest from Brussels

Civil Society Organisations Demand Open and Ambitious Approval of CAP Plans

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. […]

Latest from key partners

Organics, Agroforestry, Eco-schemes – for a Just Transition in Ireland

ARC2020’s Oliver Moore spoke to JOCECA – the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Environment and Climate Action – a Committee in the Irish Parliament. This comes just as the CAP trilogues start to finish, and as the Irish Parliament (Dáil) approves an ambitious Climate Bill which aims for 50% reduction in emissions by 2030. Below is a transcript of what he said. A longer version of an accompanying paper is also in the article.   […]

Latest from Brussels

Parliament Holds Firm as Council Demands Rejected – for now

Despite a sequence of late night meetings and to-and-fro of proposals covering most of the contentious outstanding areas, the so-called jumbo-trilogues talks have ended without agreement. Parliament and Council failed to reconcile their positions on a number of key areas. The remaining areas include”green architecture” (a number of GAECs, ring-fencing of support for eco-schemes and environmental investments, tracking climate spending, alignment to the Green Deal), internal convergence, the social dimension and coupled income support. So what happened? […]

Main stories

UK | Pond Life Revives Hope for On-Farm Wildlife 

Pond restoration yields dramatic results for nature. Seedbanks, dormant for 150 years, spring back to life; rare indigenous plants return within months. Invertebrate populations explode, significant for severely declining freshwater biodiversity. Insect chimneys attract huge numbers of birdlife and twice the species normally seen in the area. Ursula Billington reports on a farmer-inspired project to restore pondlife in Norfolk, UK. […]

Main stories

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

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.  […]