UK Archives - Page 5 of 19 - Agricultural and Rural Convention

UK | Chapter 2 : Minimising Net GHG Emissions from Food Systems

April 14, 2019 Stuart Meikle

What role does – or can – farming and food play in mitigating climate change? Retaining and storing carbon in the soils should be an obvious climate-change mitigation, improving soil fertility through the natural processes of grazing, returning animal manures, and using legumes to fix atmospheric nitrogen has the indirect benefit of reducing the farmer’s reliance on artificial nitrogen fertilisers manufactured using fossil fuels. […]

UK | Chapter 1: Robust Food Production Systems

April 10, 2019 Stuart Meikle

The food security of the British population and its following generations cannot be simplified into a policy founded on the erroneous principle that the global market will always provide. It is vital for the food security of the British people that a sizeable proportion of the nation’s food comes from accessible and reliable sources operating regenerative food systems. Chapter 1 by Stuart Meikle. […]

Book Serialisation | Creating a New British Farming Food and Rural Policy

March 25, 2019 Stuart Meikle

CAP has had a massive influence on British agriculture. No other industry will have been so greatly impacted by the United Kingdom’s EU membership, and no other industry will be as affected as Britain leaves the European Union. Leaving the EU now offers the UK the opportunity to create a new food and farming policy. […]

MEPs Mean Business on Live Exports

February 20, 2019 Louise Kelleher

The European Parliament last week called on member states to step up enforcement of existing rules on protecting livestock during transport. MEPs are urging member states to ramp up spot checks, use tracking technology to monitor compliance, and apply tougher penalties for offenders. Transport times should be cut, but the preference is to phase out live exports altogether in favour of local slaughtering. And when animals are transported to non-EU countries, EU standards should be applied. […]

If Not Meat Then What? Climate Change, Regenerative Ag and Viable Rural Areas

November 4, 2018 Oliver Moore

The starkness of the IPCC’s most recent climate change warnings – of 12 year window before runaway impacts – has focused the minds of many. What role – if any – for livestock in this brave new herd? […]

A Great British Celebration of Good Food & Small Farmers!

October 17, 2018 Helene Schulze

In the dreary drizzle several hundred gathered this Sunday for the Good Food March in London’s Parliament Square calling for an ambitious UK Agriculture Bill. They wound up for tea and talks at the We Feed the World exhibition, a photography project which celebrates small farmers the world over. […]

Post-Brexit Food, Farming and Fair Trade | Migration and Trade

August 9, 2018 Sharon Anglin Treat

How will border and mobility restrictions as well as the drafting of new trade deals under the current Brexit plan impact UK food and farming? In this final entry, Sharon Treat explores the potential risks of the Brexit deal. […]

Post-Brexit Food, Farming and Fair Trade | Food safety and labelling

August 4, 2018 Sharon Anglin Treat

What Brexit will mean for the future of UK and EU food and farming has been the topic of much debate and much uncertainty in the past few months. As the Brexit withdrawal plan is becoming more concrete, so too are the potential opportunities and concerns for the food system. Sharon Treat from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) talks us through five key risks. […]

Letter from a Lamber | Farmer’s knowledge and the fight against antibiotic resistance

July 23, 2018 Aron Marshall

Despite mounting concern about antibiotic resistance globally, parts of the UK agricultural industry remain opposed to further restriction. Could the antibiotic overuse be addressed by policymakers actively incorporating traditional good husbandry knowledge of farmers into best practice management plans? […]

Owner Eschews Huge Cash Windfall as Riverford Organics handed over to 650 staff

June 25, 2018 Oliver Moore

On the first day on June, Guy Singh-Watson handed over almost ¾ of the business- known primarily for its organic veg box deliveries in the UK – to its employees. So why did this especially committed individual do this – and reject tens of millions of pounds in the process? And what does this mean for food system democracy? […]

Does the Gove fit? Radical Shake up for UK Farming & Food after CAP & Brexit?

January 12, 2018 Aron Marshall

UK Ag minister Micheal Gove has claimed Brexit is a golden opportunity to create an independent, public goods focused national agri-food policy. This policy position has been praised by many, from environmentalists to the NFU. However, is he speaking with a forked tongue? And if not, then what might this potentially radical rupture signal for the EU and CAP? […]

UK | The Yorkshire Dales – How Changing CAP legislation Impacts People and Place

January 7, 2018 ARC

The Yorkshire Dales is an upland area of Yorkshire, Northern England. Agriculture has been an integral part of the area’s culture and economy for thousands of years. A hill farm agricultural system is upheld here, with sheep as the primary livestock, although many have diversified into mixed beef systems, and dairy operations in the lower valleys. How has CAP – and its changes over time – impacted on this place and its people? […]

“Technical Rectification”, Trade & UK’s Brexit Double Act

July 26, 2017 Peter Crosskey

Mainstream UK media have presented Brexit minister David Davis (left, without negotiating papers) as the public face of the country’s progress with Brexit talks. However, the press has studiously overlooked the back-room activities of the international trade minister Liam Fox, who has been rolling up his sleeves and starting to size up Tariff Rate Quotas (TRQs) held by the European Union at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). In an extraordinarily wide-reaching plan described as a “Technical Rectification”, Fox is planning to unilaterally carve out what he judges to be the UK’s share of TRQ tonnages for third country imports such as New Zealand sheepmeat and register the results with the WTO. The story emerged thanks to Sky News journalist Faisal Islam, but only because the TV chain was filming Fox in action at the WTO headquarters in Geneva. In the past, technical rectifications have been more limited in scope, but this editing is on an industrial scale: Fox is not waiting for Davis to get round to discussing trade with the European Commission before trying […]

UK | Sustain’s “Beyond 2020 – New Farm Policy”

July 11, 2017 Peter Crosskey

NGOs are urging a root and branch reform of agricultural policy to take the place of the CAP in the post-Brexit years. The Sustain alliance has published a four-part policy briefing. This is part two of our mini series presenting two scenarios from the UK for life #AfterCAP. […]

UK | A People’s Food Policy

July 9, 2017 Peter Crosskey

A silver lining in the Brexit cloud is that people can radically rethink how food, farming and the rural space operate in the UK. What will this mean for direct payments, for environmental regulations, for food security – and who will do the hard work of farming? Finally, is some of this blue sky thinking of interest to the rest of Europe? […]