Meet Czech farmer Terezie Daňková, who raises cattle and sheep on a 450 ha. ranch on mostly rented land in Southern Bohemia, with the help of her cowgirl daughter Barbora (20), her son Vojtěch (13), and a stable of horses. Louise Kelleher speaks to two generations of women farmers about the realities of rural life, the pull of the city, and what brings them back to the farm. […]
Many events have moved online, which has advantage and disadvantages. It can be easier to attend, but then, in rural areas, broadband coverage can be poor. In a way, this conundrum acts as a soft landing into a whole series of interesting consultations, readings, presentations and events, from Ecolise, ENRD, DESIRA and others. […]
Digital tools that suit the complexity of diversified farms and meet their specific needs, can bring new challenges but, once these are overcome, they can contribute to farm resilience and viability. Meet two Italian farm enterprises and see how their stories and narratives show that digitalisation means not only access to connectivity, but also capacity to use, manage and control technologies. […]
ARC2020 brought together a wide range of civil society participants for the A Vision for Rural Europe event. This web conference was organised by the Renew Europe political group, was hosted in the European Parliament distributed all over Europe via web conference streaming services. In advance of the event, we asked civil society for their key questions to bring to the discussion, and to help in the building of a vision and strategy for rural Europe. […]
At last week’s A Vision for Rural Europe web conference, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced an EU wide public consultation on the future of rural areas. This consultation is expected to begin in the Autumn. Here we summarise the core civil society contributions to the event, which ARC2020 mobilised, and give some background info on the process – formal and less formal, for the upcoming rural consultation. […]
A just and sustainable Europe will not be possible without rural considerations being properly integrated into the plans for Covid-19 recovery, for CAP and for the EU Green Deal. We invite you to read our draft working document on a vision and strategy for rural Europe, and then work with us to further develop and refine it, in the days, weeks and months ahead. Together we ourselves must develop our way of working together, to present a coherent voice to represent rural Europe. […]
Big Dairy’s greenhouse gas emissions are increasing, but the corporations responsible are not being held to account. Meanwhile consolidation in the dairy industry is squeezing smaller operators and hurting rural communities. It’s time to hold agribusiness accountable for its climate footprint, argues Shefali Sharma in a new report from the Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy. […]
Help ARC2020 build a vision and strategy for rural Europe, by joining the civil society participation at a high level webconference on 7th July. […]
If remote rural communities want to be part of the conversations that will shape their futures, the ability to connect with other projects and stakeholders is a crucial skill. For one island community, the coronavirus crisis was a crash course in online networking. Hannes Lorenzen reports on Eco-Week 2020 and the digital leap forward on his home island of Pellworm, Germany. […]
We don’t know yet what the “new normal” will look like, but we do know that remote work can work – with the right supports. In Ireland, the pull of jobs in the city and abroad has hollowed out rural areas, and young graduates have little incentive to return home after completing their studies in Dublin. Many young graduates from rural areas would jump at the chance to stay put and pursue their careers remotely, rather than facing crippling rents in Dublin, or a crippling commute. Now is the time for a paradigm shift in working life to rejuvenate rural communities, argues Luke Kent. […]
It is difficult to grasp the scale of the situation we face with covid-19. People’s lives change fundamentally. So do our societies and economies. We face massive reductions: less mobility, no physical meetings, no open markets, no cultural events. We are living in isolation. How can we, how can our societies adjust to this new reality? How can we as ARC2020, as European network, research community, news provider and advocacy platform contribute to keeping civic movements alive and active around sustainable farming, food supply and transition towards better farming, food supply and ago-environmental practices? […]
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. […]
Populism has become a powerful political force in Europe. The current wave of populist movements has seeped through the European countryside from France to Sweden to Poland. Yet despite the emergence of resistance and alternatives to populism, the political debate continues to overlook rural Europe. In the first of a two-part series Natalia Mamonova shares her insights into why populism is having a moment in rural areas. […]
There is a spectrum of possible responses to this unfolding crisis. Here we’ll briefly introduce some small and also larger mutual aid initiatives, or local and community responses to covid19 and what it brings out in people – from street to municipal levels, from rural to border areas. […]
What lies behind the transformational changes in marginal rural areas? What are the social, economic and cultural drivers of “Smart Villages”, which have emerged as another facet of the EU’s support for community-led development? Lauren Mosdale shares the findings of the SIMRA project. […]
Agricultural and Rural Convention