wellbeing Archives - Agricultural and Rural Convention

Sitting with our contradictions – Learning to reconnect with nature and find peace as humans

May 7, 2026 Louise Kelleher

A farm can be a place for the kind of learning that’s hard to find in educational institutions. Combining her work in both farming and networking with Education for Sustainable Development, Ann Marie Weber explores how collaboration among regional actors and transformative learning processes can drive structural change toward sustainable food systems. She runs a small farm near Marburg (Hesse, Germany), where she grows vegetables to make hot sauce, chutneys and other preserves – not for market, but to help create a space for people to connect with their own agency, food and nature. In conversation with Louise Kelleher. […]

Who milks the cows when farmers fall sick?

April 10, 2026 Natasha Foote

Who milks the cows when the farmers fall sick? There is only one answer to that question for most: the farmers, or their families. But it is a very different story in two European countries—and while right now, access to sick leave and holidays is determined by postcode, this could soon start to change. Here, ARC2020’s Natasha Foote digs into how these farm relief services work in practice and what the ingredients for success look like for other countries that want to set up similar services for their farmers. […]

France | Breaking the Silence: Big Ag’s Grip on the Wellbeing of Rural Communities

February 6, 2026 Xavier Hamon

Without rebalancing power in our agri-food systems, how can we expect our rural communities to be well? Xavier Hamon is an artisan-cook who is keenly aware of how rural powerlessness can take a toll on mental health. Here is our conversation. […]

UK | Oxford Real Farming Conference 2026 – Deeper and wider ways of engaging with the land

January 23, 2026 Oliver Moore

As a temperature check on where the alternative agri-food movement is in Britain, the Oxford Real Farming Conference is a good barometer. Oliver Moore reports from Oxford. […]

Poland | Minding our mental health: Celebrating what we have in common

January 19, 2026 Hannes Lorenzen

Ewa Smuk-Stratenwerth is co-founder of ZIARNO Ecological-Cultural Association and the Ecological Folk High School in Grzybów, Poland. As part of our series on mental health and wellbeing in rural areas, Hannes Lorenzen spoke with her about polarisation and conspiracies in rural Poland, but also about her views on “healthy patriotism” and the importance of practicing human virtues. […]

Germany | Minding our Mental Health – “Take a closer look when others stumble”

January 13, 2026 Hannes Lorenzen

Minding mental health is an ever increasing challenge for rural communities, and especially farmers. It’s a crisis exacerbated by precarious and political uncertainty, and tied up with questions of generational renewal on farms. To learn more about the situation on the ground, the services available, and what rural communities can do, Hannes Lorenzen spoke to Regina Eichinger-Schönberger, a health counsellor in Germany who specialises in suicide prevention in the green sector. […]

Rural Realities | Testing Grounds for Wellbeing

April 27, 2023 ARC

The countryside is a nice place to live. Farmers are happy. That’s what we heard on the ground in the cooperative farms we visited in France in 2021 and 2022. One thing these farms have in common is a focus on collective wellbeing: farmers are innovating and experimenting to improve quality of life for themselves and their communities. Yet these experiments go under the radar at national and European level, and need supports to weave ties between actors and sectors. Part three of a series analysing the hot topics around transition, by the Rural Resilience project team. […]