In the aftermath of the European Parliamentary Elections 2024, Oliver Moore assesses what happened and what might happen next, with a farming, food and rural lens. […]
The German Farmers’ Association (Deutscher Bauernverband) promises nature conservation, but acts against it. Jost Maurin (Die Tageszeitung, taz) makes the case that this trajectory could serve as a warning for the EU Strategic Dialogue, in which environmental and farmers’ associations are to develop a vision for the future of agriculture. […]
The ongoing farmer protests are the longest and most impactful of all the farmer protests in the history of the European Union and have led to dangerous changes in EU environmental policy and triggered a new rise of far-right political groups across the EU. In this interview, Natalia Mamonova talks about the limits of neoliberalism, the current state of farmer protests, changes in EU policy and the alarming forecast for the upcoming EU parliamentary elections in June. […]
Here we republish the joint statement, signed by 125 organisations, on the withdrawal of the proposal for the Sustainable Use Regulation (SUR), the implications of this move, and what these organisations want to happen now. […]
On Wednesday February 1, Tomaso Ferrando stood side-by-side with the farmers who had taken over Place Luxembourg and the streets adjacent to the European Parliament in Brussels. On my way, long lines of tractors with Belgian, French and Dutch plates could be seen almost a kilometre away from the square. As he drew closer to the scene, the sound of their horns and the smell of burned tires saturated my ears and nose. Here he outlines his thoughts on the farmers’ protests and what they mean. […]
Farmers’ protests continue unabated across the bloc on the back of growing calls for the resignation of the EU’s Agriculture Commissioner. Meanwhile, a new report paints a stark picture of the failures of the Farm to Fork strategy, and Belgium has weighed in on the thorny issue of reciprocal standards in the Mercosur trade deal. Natasha Foote brings you up to speed in the latest goings on in the EU agrifood sector. […]
If there’s one thing that’s clear from the past few weeks, it’s that many EU farmers are reaching breaking point. But what exactly has driven them to the brink and to the streets – and how has Brussels responded? Natasha Foote breaks down what you need to know on the farmers’ protests. […]
These ongoing farmer protests in Europe indicate that there is something fundamentally wrong with the European agricultural system. However, many journalists and politicians do not see the wood for the trees and link the protests to a specific policy or event. In this opinion piece, Natalia Mamonova discusses the farmer protests as indicators of the systemic crisis of the neoliberal agricultural model that has failed farmers and the planet. […]
In this op-ed, Dr. Jeroen Candel of Wageningen University assesses the varying, sometimes contradictory pressures which have led to the current wave of farmers’ protests. In a context of short-term concessions and political expediency, of populism and polarities, he nevertheless sees new opportunities for farming in an ecological transition. […]
When it comes to greenhouse gas emissions reductions, there is a dynamic tension between the ambitious aims of the EU and its member states on the one hand, and the realities of embedded, entrenched elements of the economy such as agri-food on the other. The European Union set target in 2021: a 50% reduction in Greenhouse Gas emissions (GHG) by 2030. Progress remains however, slow. Progress is especially slow in agriculture. Rasmus Larsen unpacks the situation in one of Europe’s intensive agriculture strongholds, Denmark, where, after faltering misfires, a new three way partnership has been proposed. What is this, and will it work? […]
“Remote Control and Peasant Intelligence – on automating decisions, suppressing knowledges and transforming ways of knowing” takes a critical perspective on new developments in the farming sphere. It focuses on the impact on peasant farming of digitisation, data gathering and management, technologisation, automation, approaches to regulation and corporate control. It also puts forward a food sovereignty and peasant agroecology perspective on digital technologies. […]
Indoor farming is a growth area, proposed as a solution for a number of problems in the agri-food system. So what is it, and how do we separate the spin from the substance? Andrea Beste with more. […]
“We can’t eat promises!” – The slogan of the Good Food Good Farming protest for a better food system, which took place in Brussels on November 8, 2023. The protest was the culmination of the Good Food Good Farming October Action Days, and highlighted the urgent need for transformative agri-food policies to realise key aspects of the EU’s Farm to Fork Strategy. […]
As the European Commission prepares for the launch of its proposal on the Sustainable Food Systems (SFS) Legislative Framework in late September, the EU Food Policy Coalition has published a joint report laying out clear policy recommendations for the SFS Law to ensure a meaningful transition to sustainable food systems across the European Union. Summary and report to download here. […]
If Ukraine joins the European Union, and the current Common Agricultural Policy system of per hectare payments remains untransformed, oligarch-run conglomerates could become eligible for tens of millions of euros in taxpayer money. But this is not the only possible agricultural reality in an enlarged EU. There are farmers, researchers, civic initiatives and officials – like the delegates of Ukraine’s Vinnytsia region who visited Low Saxony in March 2023 – exploring ways to rebuild and reorient the country’s farming and food system in times of war. […]
Agricultural and Rural Convention