Main stories

Upland Farmers Face Harsh Realities in Post-Brexit England | Part 1

In July 2023, Marianne Landzettel travelled to Northumberland, England to meet and interview four farm families. The resulting story portrays the difficulties upland farmers face as they navigate compounding crises. The phasing out of EU direct payments and their replacement with a system based on ‘public money for public goods’, combine with high input costs, extreme weather events, and increased market competition to threaten farm futures. […]

Main stories

Post-Brexit Farm Policy – Outlook Across Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales

What’s on the cards for farm policy in the UK nations post-Brexit and post-CAP? In the first part of this series, Ursula Billington reported on the state of play for England’s small-scale farmers and horticulturists. In Part 2, she talks to representatives from the Landworkers Alliance in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales to gauge the situation in the devolved nations.  […]

Main stories

Post-Brexit Farm Policy – Where Do England’s Smallholdings and Horticulture Sector Stand?

In the UK, farm policy is a devolved responsibility, so the governments of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are each working at their own pace and to their own vision of post-Brexit agricultural reform. In this article, the first of a two-part series, Ursula Billington presents the state of play in England, the nation so far taking the most novel approach. […]

Latest from Brussels

Winds of Change at COP27? Agri-climate news round

The winds of winter are blowing into Europe, over in Egypt is a different wind gathering force? A wind of change? Until the 18th of November, COP27 is taking place in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Last year’s COP in Glasgow has largely been viewed by the international community as underwhelming. So what’s going on in COP and in agri-climate news? Sometimes it’s important to follow the money… […]

Latest from key partners

Op Ed | Hunger Games and Locked in Pesticides

In this op-ed, Matthias Wolfschmidt of Foodwatch International unpacks the EU’s food system, its reliance on cheap imports, its generation of food waste, the power of lobby groups and Europe’s subsequent reliance on damaging pesticides and fertilizers. In this context, Wolfschmidt considers how the weaponisation of hunger embeds a lock in of problematic agri-industrial inputs, while also pointing to a way out of this bind within 15 years.   […]

Main stories

West Balkans – Accession, Agriculture and a Greener Agenda

War in Ukraine has sharpened the EU’s focus on food security, farm and trade policies and the EU Green Deal. This war has also spotlighted progressive engagement with the Western Balkans, a region with its own simmering political tensions not unrelated to the wider conflict. Agricultural ministers meet this week to engage, to connect to EU institutions, but also to help lead on a greener farming agenda for Europe. Hannes Lorenzen, who participated in the meeting, has more. […]

Latest from the ARC network

Western Balkans | Reviving Rural Areas & Moving Towards EU Integration

This week the second Balkan Rural Parliament took place in Ohrid, North Macedonia. Organised by the Balkan Rural Development Network, the Balkan Rural Parliament gives a voice to rural communities in the making of rural development policy for the Western Balkans. For EU accession countries, rural development is a key driver to accelerate the process of EU integration. The Parliament highlighted the need to strengthen mutual trust on every level between people and national institutions, as well as between the Western Balkans and the EU to build equal partnerships, writes Aleksandra Todorovska. […]

Main stories

The True Cost of Britain’s Addiction to Factory-Farmed Chicken

The intensive poultry industry in the UK has expanded in recent decades, becoming more akin to the USA’s mega farms. Investigating how intensive poultry units have multiplied across certain parts of the UK, Alison Caffyn discovered that the poultry industry has taken advantage of weak regulatory and planning regimes to scale up the lucrative business.  […]