Latest from key partners Archives - Agricultural and Rural Convention

Super Stories at Soup & Talk 2021 – Be There!

11 January, 2021 ARC

Would you like to hear the story of an urban gardener in Syria? Or about the most famous hectare in France, growing hope in a back garden in Venezuela or peatland activists in Northern Germany? Action for fair and agroecological food system transformation takes countless forms – Soup & Talk brings together a global mix of innovative initiatives ready to share their grassroots efforts with the world. The Soup & Talk good food and good farming slam is happening via Zoom this Saturday, January 16th from 15:30 to 19:00 CET, and registration is free. […]

Regional Rural Responses – Reimagined.

14 December, 2020 Alison Brogan

As the pandemic collides with inequality and the ecological emergencies, fresh approaches to building resilient local food economies are emerging. Innovative communities are experimenting with ways to shorten, amplify and democratise supply chains. ARC2020, Cultivate and Forum Synergies came together to organise a webinar where pioneering community-led initiatives operating at the regional level, with the aim of encouraging the replication, scaling up and scaling across of these approaches. […]

Soup and Talk 2021 – Tell the World about Your Good Food Initiative!

14 December, 2020 ARC

Running since 2011, Wir Haben Es Satt (WHES) has become Europe’s biggest gathering against industrial farming and for a fair and agroecological and food systems transformation. 2021 will see a unique iteration of WHES, with many activities happening digitally. With much of the action online, this also means that people all over the world can now join in. Here we introduce a core part of WHES, Soup & Talk 2021, which ARC2020 is helping coordinate. […]

The Common Agriculture Policy and Sustainable Farming: A statement by scientists (December 2020)

8 December, 2020 ARC

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. […]

PAN Europe Reveals: Member States Act Against EU Pesticide Reduction

3 December, 2020 ARC

The way forward is for farmers to embrace the ecological transition that the European Green Deal is proposing and to use Integrated Past Management to work with – not against – nature. But a number of Member States are actively working against pesticide reduction, reveals Pesticide Action Network Europe. […]

ARC2020 Event | Local Food – Reimagining Regional Responses

20 November, 2020 Alison Brogan

Join us on December 9th at 17:00 CET for a participatory web conference on ‘Local Food – Reimagining Regional Responses’. In partnership with Forum Synergies and Cultivate, ARC2020 is co-organising this online event which will present collaborative approaches to building rural resilience, and consider how we can progress agri-food movements from the local level to the regional. […]

Building a Long Term Rural Vision with Hannes Lorenzen

26 October, 2020 Hannes Lorenzen

Here Hannes Lorenzen gives his insights into the Commission’s current rural vision process, what led to it, what other processes are driven more by civil society, and how we can all work with the European Green Deal and other initiatives to help rural areas blossom. […]

Regenerative Agriculture part 3 | Working With Nature, Not Suppressing It

26 October, 2020 Peter Dunne

In the third and final installment in this series on regenerative agriculture, Peter Dunne explains how regenerative agriculture is about working with nature, not suppressing it. We’re often told nature and agriculture can’t share the same space. But we urgently need a paradigm shift, because true resilience only comes through diversity. […]

Billions for CAP as an “extinction machine” – Farm to Fork Derailed

14 October, 2020 ARC

Next week, likely on October 20, the European parliament will vote on a supposedly historical reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which accounts for over one third of the EU annual budget. But as it stands, it is rather set to become a historical failure of rather catastrophic proportions. Op-Ed by Nina Holland, Martin Pigeon and Hans van Scharen, researchers at Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) […]

Regenerative Agriculture part 2 | A Soils-First Farming & Food Policy

13 October, 2020 Peter Dunne

In the second installment of an exclusive series on regenerative agriculture, Peter Dunne unpacks the rise of agrochemicals and the noxious legacy of the Green Revolution. He argues that regenerative agriculture is a reason for hope, if only we can put soils first in our farming and food policy.
[…]

Reclaiming the Place of Agrobiodiversity in the Conservation and Food Debates

12 October, 2020 ARC

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. […]

Upcomings – Rural Online Events September and Beyond

25 September, 2020 ARC

Many events have moved online, which has advantage and disadvantages. It can be easier to attend, but then, in rural areas, broadband coverage can be poor. In a way, this conundrum acts as a soft landing into a whole series of interesting consultations, readings, presentations and events, from Ecolise, ENRD, DESIRA and others. […]

New IAASTD+10 Book – Transforming Our Food Systems

24 September, 2020 ARC

A critical new book released today (24th September) by United Nations’ World Agriculture Report (IAASTD) members calls for an accelerated transformation of our food systems. The authors, including ARC2020’s Benny Haerlin, point to the need for a paradigm shift in the perception of the global food system, incorporating agroecology. Here we feature an op-ed by Katharine Earley. […]

Insect Atlas: Europe’s Killing Fields

21 September, 2020 ARC

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. […]

Your Land, My Land, Our Land: Using International Legal Tools

10 September, 2020 ARC

It’s now easier than ever to use international tools to fight for access to land. By crafting a strategy and tooling up with the right legislation, social movements and civil society organisations can achieve wins for land rights — as we can learn from the Sami people’s historic victory earlier this year, write Astrid Bouchedor, Attila Szocs, Philip Seufert, and Fernando García-Dory. […]