How can we get young people back onto the land, into rural areas and contributing to local culture and the local economy? There are many routes. Here’s one approach a couple who make cheese have taken in Brittany. […]
Comment faire pour que des jeunes retournent à la terre et dans les campagnes ? Comment les associer à la culture locale et à l’économie locale ? Il existe de nombreux moyens. Voici une approche que quelques-uns ont adoptée en Bretagne. […]
Farms have to be viable economically to survive and indeed thrive. Nevertheless, as the years pass, it’s worth thinking about how the farming life is lived. Stress, workload, debt – how do these impact on wellbeing? […]
Les exploitations agricoles doivent être économiquement viables pour survivre et même prospérer. Néanmoins, au fil des ans, il est utile de réfléchir à la façon dont la vie agricole est vécue. Stress, charge de travail, endettement : quel est l’impact sur le bien-être ? […]
In part two of this exclusive three parter on Spain’s internal CAP debate, Marta Zygadlo delves deeper into the substance of the position adopted by Spain with regard to the European Commission’s CAP consultation, focusing here on financing. […]
In this exclusive three part series, Marta Zygadlo – a lawyer in Spain working on food systems and food governance, explores the fascinating CAP debate in the Iberian country. Part one introduces the broad contours of the debate, including the Spanish government’s response document to the European Commission CAP consultation. […]
How can farmers, researchers and administrators work together to really preserve mountain grasslands, which are threatened with scrub encroachment and land abandonment? Dr. Ika Darnhofer outlines some findings from a recent paper Darnhofer and colleagues published. […]
Mainstream UK media have presented Brexit minister David Davis (left, without negotiating papers) as the public face of the country’s progress with Brexit talks. However, the press has studiously overlooked the back-room activities of the international trade minister Liam Fox, who has been rolling up his sleeves and starting to size up Tariff Rate Quotas (TRQs) held by the European Union at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). In an extraordinarily wide-reaching plan described as a “Technical Rectification”, Fox is planning to unilaterally carve out what he judges to be the UK’s share of TRQ tonnages for third country imports such as New Zealand sheepmeat and register the results with the WTO. The story emerged thanks to Sky News journalist Faisal Islam, but only because the TV chain was filming Fox in action at the WTO headquarters in Geneva. In the past, technical rectifications have been more limited in scope, but this editing is on an industrial scale: Fox is not waiting for Davis to get round to discussing trade with the European Commission before trying […]
Progress towards a CAP Communication is ongoing, with two events recently. These have updated Minister and other stakeholders of the progress towards a making changes in the Common Agricultural Policy – CAP. They have also providing an opportunity to test the popularity of ideas and make the case for sector positions. Here’s our July CAP roundup. […]
A preliminary agreement has been reached after 20 months of trilogue negotiations between EU Commission, Council of Ministers and European Parliament for a new organic regulation. The main outstanding issues, which delayed agreement for so long have either been settled or deferred. Here’s what this means. […]
The CAP consultation is complete, and the results are in. So who participated, and how representative was the process? Here ARC2020 presents the top three key insights from the information available so far. […]
Using a recent document by the Commission on Ecological Focus Areas – EFAs – this long read traces the story of The Common Agriculture Policy’s EFAs. EFAs are up for discussion and consideration once again, as current Commissioner Phil Hogan seems intent on banning pesticides from these areas. They may, after all, emerge as a way to protect biodiversity and the ecosystem and agri services nature provides. In four parts. […]
French government report warns of problems for European agriculture after Brexit, while outlining priorities for CAP. […]
A team of researchers in France have shown that is it possible to reduce pesticide use on most French arable farms without impacting on either yield or profitability. […]
The aim of the 4pour1000 initiative (4per1000 in English) is to increase carbon in the soil by 0.04%. This could help halt the annual increase in Co2 in the atmosphere. The initiative is seeking expert comments on biological soil indicators by 15th March. Mario Cattizone has more […]
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