Flora Sonkin is an international consultant and independent researcher interested in agroecological rural development and sustainable food systems. She has previously worked with Terra Nuova, writing on pastoralism and human rights violations in Tanzania for the Hands on the Land for Food Sovereignty campaign, and supporting the Civil Society Mechanism of the Committee on World Food Security. She has also worked as a researcher for the Oakland Institute, analysing the implications of agribusiness-friendly policy reforms for communal land rights and small-scale sustainable agriculture. Flora holds a MSc in International Development Studies from Wageningen University, specializing in Rural Sociology, and her thesis research focused on a municipal goatherd project as a pilot for innovation in an agroecological transition in rural Spain.
A new report published by Nyeleni Europe, a network of European grassroots civil society organisations campaigning for food sovereignty, and Central Asia Platform for Food Sovereignty, calls for a Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) that explicitly supports small-scale sustainable producers and promotes a re-localisation of food supply-chains. […]
CAP’s way to address diverse rural spaces under a broad policy umbrella has many shortcomings, including the discrimination against wood pastures as eligible land for direct payments. This impacts pastoralists and the landscape negatively. So will this be addressed by the new reform of the CAP? Or has something else emerged which might actually act as a tool for change? by Flora Sonkin. […]
Agricultural and Rural Convention