Rural Resilience

Le Semestre rural, un outil pour mettre en œuvre une véritable politique d’ensemble pour les zones rurales

Contribution au débat autour de la Communication sur une vision à long terme pour les zones rurales, qui sera publiée prochainement par la Commission européenne, La proposition consiste à se greffer sur le Semestre européen existant, en faisant en sorte d’y inclure la totalité des préoccupations rurales – environnementales, sociales, économiques, numériques, éducatives, etc. Par Marjorie Jouen. […]

Latest from key partners

Climate Crisis | EU Agriculture Needs Systemic Solutions, Not New GM Technology

As the debate around genetically-modified “super crops” heats up, tried-and-tested solutions to tackling the climate crisis are in danger of being left out in the cold. Any deregulation of new GMOs threatens to undermine diverse and self-determined approaches to seed and food production that enhance biodiversity and soil health, and strengthen the resilience of entire agro-ecosystems, argues Stefanie Hundsdorfer. […]

Latest from Brussels

Cut The Crap, Withdraw The CAP!

Climate striker Sommer Ackerman became active in protests for a better CAP in October 2020.  She combines activism at EU level in the WithdrawTheCAP campaign with activism at national level to make agri-food policy change in Finland. […]

Latest from Brussels

Super Trilogue Weakens Results-Oriented CAP

The shift from compliance towards a result-oriented delivery model was highly debated in the super trilateral meeting on the 26 March 2021. Have the EU co-legislators ensured that the CAP Strategic Plans are result-oriented, while still holding the delivery model accountable for taxpayers? Here is our analysis on the main outcomes of the meeting. […]

Latest from the ARC network

More Legumes Please!

A newly published paper seeks to reposition legumes as protagonists in policy debates and encourage us to identify policies that would better support the transformation of European food- and feed-systems to a new norm, with greatly increased production and consumption of homegrown legumes and homegrown legume-based products. A savoury account of legume policy by lead author Bálint Balázs. […]

Main stories

A Soil Scientist’s Perspective – Carbon Farming, CO2 Certification & Carbon Sequestration in Soil

Carbon farming is a new buzz word, hotly debated in the EU Commission, in European Ministries and Chambers of Agriculture, and the subject of numerous projects and movements. It is in fact proposed as an ecoscheme by the Commission.  So far, however, there is no binding definition of “carbon farming” and there seem to be many different understandings of the term. What most approaches have in common is the objective of storing carbon in the soil in some way. Soil Scientist Dr. Andrea Beste unpacks some important points for this contested approach to soil and land management. […]