Main stories Archives - Page 2 of 129 - Agricultural and Rural Convention

Rise for Food Justice – Join the European Days of Action 2025!

September 23, 2025 ARC

October is just around the corner – and so are the European Days of Action! Since 2018, the #GoodFoodGoodFarming movement has united thousands across Europe to demand just food systems. This year’s focus is Food Justice: recognising food as a human right, not just a commodity. Today’s system puts profit before people, but this October citizens can take action and call on EU leaders to ensure safe, healthy and affordable food for all. Good Food Good Farming tells us more. […]

Rural Resilience Caravan to Return to Plessé, France

September 23, 2025 ARC

On 27 – 30 November, the Rural Resilience Gathering 2025 will take place in Plessé, France, co-organised by ARC2020 and elected representatives of Plessé together with a whole host of partners active in agroecology, access to land, food sovereignty and rural justice across Europe. If you are interested in taking part in the Gathering, express your interest via the form linked in the article! […]

When Policy Fails, People Step Up – Inside ARC’s Rural Resilience Project

September 17, 2025 Ashley Parsons

Rural Resilience is ARC2020’s strategic initiative to strengthen civil society’s role in shaping the future of rural Europe. In a moment of democratic fragility, land inequality, and ecological breakdown, we’re working with partners across the continent who fill the gaps left by failing policies — to imagine, together, what rural transformation can look like from the ground up. Coordinator Ashley Parsons presents the project. […]

Op-Ed | Farmland Sees the Less Sunny Side of Germany’s Solar Transition

September 16, 2025 ARC

Germany’s energy transition is affecting its land market, driving investment and increasing concentration of land ownership. In this op-ed, Anne Neuber of Netzwerk Flächensicherung, an alliance working to secure land for ecological, regional and peasant agriculture in Germany, explores these dynamics and calls for stronger regulation to ensure solar expansion works in harmony with farming and environmental priorities. […]

European Rural Parliament 2025 — Rural Community Solutions to Global Challenges

September 8, 2025 ARC

This October 20-23, over 400 rural delegates from across Europe will gather in the north-east of Scotland for the 6th European Rural Parliament (ERP), a participative democratic assembly that shines a spotlight on the power of rural communities to respond to global crises. With the theme “Strength from Opportunity: Rural Community Solutions to Global Challenges”, this year’s ERP will highlight how rural and island people, places, and practices not only bear the brunt of climate, demographic, and political shifts but also offer transformative responses rooted in solidarity, sustainability, and place-based knowledge. […]

Re-Sowing the Seeds of Connection in Switzerland, Part II – Healthy Interdependencies, Led By Farmers

September 2, 2025 Adèle Pautrat

In a global context marked by rising trade tensions, identity-based isolationism, and climate pressures, the Seeds4All project wanted to understand how Switzerland, landlocked at the heart of the European Union, approaches the challenges of food sovereignty and navigates its many borders. During recent fields visits, we met a variety of initiatives seeking to reconnect producers, processors, and consumers—fostering a renewed sense of control over food systems. Part two of a series of reflections by Adèle Pautrat. […]

Does EU Policy Have An Appetite For Local Food?

September 1, 2025 Oliver Moore

Across Europe, small-scale farmers are essential actors in local food provisioning, yet they face structural barriers to accessing public support. While industrial agriculture continues to receive the lion’s share of EU subsidies, the scaffolding meant to support local food systems often proves patchy or inaccessible. What EU policy supports are there for smaller farmers to supply food locally? Oliver Moore and Ashley Parsons chew over the options. […]

Gérard Choplin Obituary – Farewell to a Pioneer of the EU Peasant Movement

August 21, 2025 ARC

It is with sadness and deep gratitude that we bid farewell to Gérard Choplin — agronomist, political companion, co-founder of the European Peasant Movement, and tireless defender of agriculture that respects human beings and nature. With Gérard, we lose a man who shaped politics, without ever becoming a politician. Obituary by José Bové und Jean-Marc Desfilhes, Hannes Lorenzen und Andrea Fink-Keßler […]

Letter From The Farm | How a Young Lithuanian Farmer Blends Science, Soil & Community

August 18, 2025 Hannes Lorenzen

ARC’s Hannes Lorenzen met Vytenis Grigas, a young Lithuanian farmer and psychology lecturer, at a CEJA conference on the future of EU farm policy. Five years ago Vytenis began what he calls a “serious experiment for future farming.” In his village of Kiemeliai near Vilnius, he now combines soil care, community spirit, and new ideas for rural life. […]

Letter From The Farm | Neighbours, Not Numbers: How Local Feeds Us All

July 31, 2025 Marie Halicki

In a farming system that demands more than it gives, Marie Halicki finds that relationships, not yields, nourish resilience, sovereignty, and sanity. […]

Rural Europe Takes Action – Food System Lessons from Marburg

July 30, 2025 ARC

What happened when we set out to identify and nurture the ingredients of local food system transformation in Marburg, Germany? This was the aim of the Rural Europe Takes Action – Germany project (2023-2025), through which ARC2020 partnered with kollektiv von MORGEN and AbL Hessen – supported by the Robert Bosch Stiftung – to connect the dots from the local to the European level. […]

A Not So Common Agricultural Policy and A Mega MF(F)ing Fund – What’s Cooking in the New CAP?

July 21, 2025 Natasha Foote

We promised a budgetary bombshell, and that’s exactly what dropped in Brussels last week. With a (not so) ‘Common’ Agricultural Policy, the Commission has juddered into a new direction — and if you’re wondering what in the MF(F)-ing hell just happened, you’re certainly not the only one. Here Natasha Foote unpacks some first takeaways and why it has so far gone down like a sack of manure. […]

Op-Ed | “Non-Productive Trees” – Still A Bizarre Concept

July 16, 2025 Gerry Lawson

With Europe’s forests under more pressure than ever to remove carbon and provide all manner of ecosystem services, is there such a thing as a non-productive tree? And what exactly is a high diversity landscape feature? In the view of the European Agroforestry Federation, the European Commission should use more precise terminology, notably in the Nature Restoration Regulation. Op-ed by Gerry Lawson. […]

LEAK: CAP Crumbles as EU Eyes Radical Post-2027 Overhaul

July 14, 2025 Natasha Foote

The European Commission is preparing to tear up the architecture of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), in what could set the stage for a radical overhaul of the EU’s farming subsidy programme, according to leaked drafts. Natasha Foote reports from Brussels. […]

The Rise of a New Grain Alliance – Germany’s Free Bakers Sow the Seeds of Change

July 9, 2025 Hannes Lorenzen

A new idea is brewing in Germany, with the first seeds sown of a new alliance along the food value chain for cereals and legumes. ARC2020’s President Hannes Lorenzen reports on how farmers, bakers, seed savers, researchers, and grain breeders are coming together with a shared vision […]