Fuori di Zucca is not just an online platform coordinating fair and sustainable purchasing transactions. The association mobilises a peer-to-peer network, where members of civil society, policymakers, producers, consumers can interact around a common mission: food sovereignty. So how does it do this? Matteo Metta has more. […]
This October the pan-European Good Food Good Farming European Days of Action took place with decentralised events across Europe for the fourth time. 188 events were organised in 18 different countries fighting for better food and farming in Europe and across the world. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, more events than ever were organised during the action month. […]
Farmers in England and Wales want to move away from centralised supply chains where they say they have little influence over prices, not enough connection to consumers, and are not rewarded for delivering positive climate and nature outcomes. This is according to the findings of Sustain in its report ‘Beyond the Farmgate’ which lays out the results of a new survey of 500 English and Welsh farmers. […]
Here we republish the introduction to ‘Food Sovereignty, Climate Action and Local Resilience’, a pamphlet produced by the Green European Foundation with the support of Green Foundation Ireland and Cultivate. […]
What happens when a farm invites the wider community to collectively tease out its future? In September ARC2020 visited Brittany to find out. Seed savers, farm workers and chefs sat down with elected officials and representatives of regional organisations to share insights and listen to each other’s experiences. Louise Kelleher reports. […]
Welcome to Mother Earth – Móðir Jörð – an organic farm in Vallanes, East Iceland, where people have lived and farmed since the 12th century. Here, Eygló Björk Ólafsdóttir and Eymundur Magnússon grow grain and vegetables, and cultivate local food culture in their on-farm shop and café.
The couple are in many ways ahead of their time. In the seventies they helped bring back barley at 66°N. In the eighties they got started on planting one million trees on the farm. In the nineties, their farm was one of Iceland’s first to be certified organic. Now, with the season of the midnight sun almost upon us, Eygló shares her first letter from the farm. […]
As the pandemic collides with inequality and the ecological emergencies, fresh approaches to building resilient local food economies are emerging. Innovative communities are experimenting with ways to shorten, amplify and democratise supply chains. ARC2020, Cultivate and Forum Synergies came together to organise a webinar where pioneering community-led initiatives operating at the regional level, with the aim of encouraging the replication, scaling up and scaling across of these approaches. […]
In post-Brexit Britain, the new Agriculture Bill is exposing the fault lines between environmental conservation, neoliberal trade deals, and the future of small-scale farming. In part two of this series, Anoushka Zoob Carter explores the phenomenon of technological nationalism in post-CAP politics, and the conflicts it is generating between advocates of rural renewal and of an emancipatory rural politics. […]
Join us on December 9th at 17:00 CET for a participatory web conference on ‘Local Food – Reimagining Regional Responses’. In partnership with Forum Synergies and Cultivate, ARC2020 is co-organising this online event which will present collaborative approaches to building rural resilience, and consider how we can progress agri-food movements from the local level to the regional. […]
Brexit and the Covid crisis have yielded easy pickings for the far right. In the first of a two-part series, Anoushka Zoob Carter unpacks how new forms of nationalism are exploiting a broken food and farming system. […]
Four innovative and committed agroecology initiatives showed how they stepped up in times of Covid19 at a webinar organised by Forum Synergies and ARC2020 last week. And dozens, from all over Europe and beyond, got involved in the conversation. Alison Brogan tells us about this event which provided a moment to reflect, some key contemporary learnings, and which sowed the seeds of further action. […]
At this Webinar we will learn about new tools and approaches agroecological communities have developed since Covid-19. In the face of an extra, massive challenge, communities all over Europe have stepped up and developed creative responses for distributing good food. A number of examples will be presented and discussed with the practitioners themselves, while there will be a real focus on co-learning and next steps for deepening our collective food resilience. […]
In the second instalment of a two-part series on populism and rural Europe, Natalia Mamonova shares her insights on populist strategies in the countryside, food sovereignty as a counterforce to these dangerous trends, and the impact the coronavirus crisis is having on right-wing populist movements and rural transformations. […]
In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, our creaking food systems have triggered a crisis within a crisis. Covid-19 has sounded the alarm on the planet’s unsustainable agricultural systems. Small-scale farms are vital links in the resilient local supply chains we need to build. But in the Czech Republic small farmers face challenges, and a six-week closure of farmers markets has hit hard. Louise Kelleher reports. […]
With Covid19, aka the coronavirus, come restrictions on people’s outdoor movements and gathering. This means that, while supermarkets are considered essential, it seems to be case by case for other food markets: instantly, farmers markets are shutting all over Europe with serious consequences for small producers. Digital food platforms have never been more urgent. Open Food Network is perhaps the best example of a good food network that’s digitised, cooperative, open source, not for profit and ready for your community. […]
Agricultural and Rural Convention