farmers protests Archives - Agricultural and Rural Convention

Op-Ed | Pesticide lobby use farmers’ protests as cover for slashing EU safety regulations

December 18, 2025 ARC

It’s getting increasingly harder for the pesticide lobby to argue against the science showing harm to people and ecosystems of its toxic products. ‘Luckily’ it has an ace up its sleeve: farmers’ frustrations/anger. Corporate lobby group Croplife Europe appears to be opportunistically planning to use farmers’ protests on the 18th of December in Brussels, in order to create political momentum to further slash EU safety rules for its products. Op-ed by Nina Holland of Corporate Europe Observatory. […]

Op-Ed: Time for a Rethink to Reverse the Rapid Decline of Farming in Europe

October 8, 2024 Marco Contiero

A new study from the Greenpeace European Unit – Go Big or go Bust shows just how rapidly farming in Europe is going in a particular trajectory. Simply put, small farm are disappearing, and large farms are both getting bigger and are getting more economically dominant. These socio-economic realities contribute to social unrest and farmer’ protests. So far, the European Institutions have reacted in a knee jerk manner to protests, and have not addressed these underlining causes. Instead, Marco Contiero (EU Policy Director on Agriculture at the Greenpeace European Unit) argues in this op-ed that a better resourced system must put in place to encourage a transition towards a truly sustainable farming system. […]

What the EU farmers survey tells us – and doesn’t tell us – about CAP burden

May 8, 2024 Natasha Foote

For months, we have been hearing about the bureaucratic burden that has been pushing EU farmers to the brink. Now, the preliminary results of a Commission survey designed to unpack this are in – so does this administrative load turn out to be heavy enough to justify the hasty re-opening of the EU’s farming subsidy programme? Natasha Foote digs in. […]