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Will organic farming save “unbalanced” Romanian agriculture?

April 6, 2015 ARC

According to recent figures released by Eurostat, Romanian agriculture is highly unbalanced. That is not the big surprise. In the last 20 years the country’s agricultural landscape was in a continuous transformation; agrarian reforms without a long term vision, real estate and agribusiness “cowboys” from all over the world speculating on low prices, productions focusing mostly on export commodities…all in a country of peasants versus their institutional neighbours. The surprise lies in how different stakeholders interpret these figures. Let’s have a look. According to the EU analysis, Romania is the 8th agricultural power of Europe and for the year of 2014 has an agricultural production estimated to 15.5 billion Euro (1160 Euro/hectare). Poland was the only other ex-communist country which outranked Romania having a 22.5 billion Euro (1660 Euro/hectar) production. The top ranks go to France, with its 70.5 billion Euro and Germany – 51 billion Euro production. Where is the great unbalance? Crop production amounts for 73% of the total, 26% being attributed to animal farming and only 1% represents agricultural services. On the […]

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UK government reverts to paper for basic payments

March 27, 2015 ARC

With just seven weeks to go before the May 15 deadline for applications under the Basic Payments Scheme (BPS) the UK government has climbed down from its dogmatic commitment to digital by default. The Rural Payments Agency (RPA) will still require farmers to register online, but is making preparations to input data from paper forms. RPA chief executive Mark Grimshaw welcomed the possibility of more time for BPS claims, with the European Commission’s offer of an extended deadline of June 15. This was made by European agriculture commissioner Phil Hogan. According to the RPA, “over 80%” of English farms have registered. Meanwhile, the RPA is providing mobile units to reach isolated farmers, in addition to its 50-strong network of drop-in centres. Around 15,000 eligible farmers still need to register. Tenant Farmers’ Association (TFA) chief executive George Dunn expressed his relief that “DEFRA has at last accepted the need to abandon its plans for online only applications,” adding that “…the RPA has been left to pick up the pieces.” During the past few weeks, his membership […]

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Glyphosate: EU approval process seriously questioned

March 23, 2015 ARC

Guest opinion piece by Julia Sievers -of Agrarkoordination. This year, the EU will decide whether glyphosate – the best-selling pesticide worldwide – remains approved after 2015 for another 10 years. As a basis for this decision, German authorities – on behalf of the EU – have re-examined the risks of this pesticide. The German authorities argue in their assessment report that glyphosate is not dangerous and recommend a re-authorization. But the official assessment is extremely controversial. A fundamental problem is that the judgement of the authorities is based almost exclusively on studies of companies that produce their own glyphosate-based pesticides and therefore have a high self-interest in positive study results. In contrast to the assessment of the authorities and the industry studies, numerous studies of industry-independent scientists have give rise to more and more doubts about the safety of glyphosate and glyphosate-based pesticide. In addition to the adverse impacts on biodiversity, water, soil and some animal species, public attention has been paid to the health risks of the herbicide. There is scientific evidence, that Glyphosate causes cancer, […]

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“Peasant” is not a bad word … but what does it mean?!

January 29, 2015 ARC

Written By:  Derek Freitas, Food Chains Campaign Coordinator for Eco Ruralis   General Context The word “peasant” is used in all sorts of ways to mean different things by many groups of people across the world. It is indeed very hard to define. This is particularly problematic due to the fact that the majority of decision-makers related to establishing agricultural policy at the national, EU and global levels don’t have an accepted reference point for understanding one another in a basic sense. Often, the only time when self-ascribed “peasants” feel that they are accurately portrayed is when they explain what that word means to them. But, again, even they disagree based on cultural, historical, geographical and individual differences.   Global Context The international peasant movement, La Via Campesina, calls for an International Convention on the Rights of Peasants and states the following in Article I of its own “Declaration on the Rights of Peasants – Women and Men”: “A peasant is a man or woman of the land, who has a direct and special relationship […]