Can sustainable growth really allow biodiversity to thrive? In the second of a two-part series, Alison Brogan investigates the impact of Ireland’s ambitious agri-food strategy on protected grassland habitats. […]
The European Commission recently identified precision farming as a possible agricultural practice that eco-schemes could support in the post-2022 Common Agricultural Policy. In this analysis Dr Andrea Beste examines the potential of precision farming to provide environmental services for climate and species protection. […]
The first cross-country EU citizens opinion poll on gene drives has found that a majority of respondents supports the call for a global moratorium on release of Gene Drive Organisms and agrees that a global consensus is needed before any gene drive could take place. The representative survey which polled 8,826 citizens from eight EU countries was conducted by international market research institute YouGov. […]
With trilogues in progress behind unacceptably closed doors, the Commission has released another document on eco-schemes. While it’s a good sign that the Commission is still in the game there are some curious pet projects appearing. Oliver Moore unpacks some details. […]
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. […]
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. […]
Biodiversity, organic farming, young farmers and other areas received a welcome financial boost from the EU institutions on Tuesday (10th November). The European Parliament’s negotiating team and the German Presidency of the Council reached agreement on the forthcoming Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), the EU’s budget for 2021 – 2027. […]
The European Commission has initiated the process of building a vision for rural Europe for 2040. But to be genuinely valuable, a visioning exercise should look no further than the near future. ARC2020 president Hannes Lorenzen envisions the next seven years, looking ahead to 2027 before bringing us back to 2021 and the present day. […]
Both academic and policy debates tend to focus on how to further intensify agricultural landscapes to spare natural lands for natural biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration. This Brief from IDDRI elaborates on a literature review of recent publications to argue that equal attention should be paid to the protection and restoration of biodiversity within agricultural landscapes, most notably for the role it plays as a critical production factor. […]
Seeds4All is dedicated to seed diversity, and it aims to “give visibility to all European organisations that collect, enrich, produce, disseminate and sustainably use traditional and new varieties of seeds belonging to the public domain, freely reproducible and not genetically modified.” […]
In Europe’s killing fields, the biggest driver of insect decline is monoculture-dominated and pesticide-reliant industrial agriculture. The EU should channel the billions it spends on CAP to support climate- and insect-friendly farming practices, argue Sandra Bell, Barbara Unmüßig and Jagoda Munić. […]
The German presidency of the EU has made some severe proposals to neuter environmental aspects of the upcoming CAP plan. German Agriculture Minister Julia Kloeckner has proposed weakening areas dedicated to nature, taking money from eco-schemes, and potentially protecting CAP from the EU Commission’s flagship EU Green Deal. […]
With big farms gobbling up nearly half of the CAP pie, direct payments are exacerbating income inequality among farmers – whilst fuelling the destruction of the very environment upon which farming depends, finds a new study by Murray Scown, Kimberly Nicholas and Mark Brady. […]
Pollinators secure our food supply, but Europe’s wild pollinators are being wiped out by intensive agriculture and the use of pesticides and fertilisers. In the latest in a series of damning reports, the European Court of Auditors accuses the Commission of failing ailing pollinator populations. Louise Kelleher reports. […]
The agriculture section of the EU Green Deal is plagued with contradictions. On the plus side, it finally acknowledges the need to massively develop agroecology. But Farm to Fork advocates for a range of false solutions, including so-called “carbon farming”. All agricultural models cannot coexist, argue Manon Castagné and François Delvaux in this op-ed. […]
Agricultural and Rural Convention