It’s easy to be overwhelmed. As we prepare to ride the wave of multiple crises, going into 2026 we are minding our mental health at ARC2020, and diving into this topic with rural actors and communities. A New Year’s message from ARC2020 president Hannes Lorenzen.
Welcome 2026!
What are we heading for? Do we look into the new year with faith or with fear? With fatigue of bad news, or with determination to get our act together? In 2025, a wave of regression washed over us. We suffered extensive damage in the political field that we are cultivating. The Green Deal lost what was left of it. EU ambitions to tackle climate change faded away, much earlier than at COP30 in Brazil. The agro-industrial complex is now enjoying a revival, since the precautionary principle for the release of agro-chemicals and “new” GMOs was sacrificed by the European Commission. Agro-environmental measures have become optional for member states. And it looks as if a future budget for CAP as well as regional and rural development financing will live off the dregs of European armament projects and subsidies for retrograde car and oil industries.
Where is Europe? Our continent finds itself in a tight sandwich of reloaded imperialism from East and West, and from the Far East – and can’t find its voice or place. Russia’s war intensifies in Ukraine, seconded by the United States to reach a deal for sharing Ukraine’s resources. The Middle East is in constant turmoil, fired by the same geopolitical ambitions – Oil. Latin America is again being fashioned as the backyard of the US or robbed with hold-up regime change. Not to mention US # 1’s ambitions to annex its northern neighbours. Breaching international law seems to be the new normal.
In this new geopolitical landscape Europe is unprepared to steer its own course. It seems only a question of time before populist or extreme-right actors govern or dissolve the Union. Nationalism is back across the continent. Rural regions suffer from the new centrism of urban areas.
Could local Europe again become the place to organise for community spirit, solidarity and democracy?
This moment feels like struggling in a giant wave at a very rough sea.
Let’s dive in
The American physiologist Walter Cannon introduced the concept of fight-or-flight reactions of living organisms to acute threat. He showed that the sympathetic nervous system prepares the body to fight confronting the threat, or to flee escaping it. Later colleague researchers added freeze, becoming immobile, and fawn, appeasing the source of threat.
Which one do you choose these days?
Fawn seems to be the choice of the European Union and many EU member states regarding the US #1’s trade war and “peace deals”. But the current EU-Mercosur free trade deal is more flight than fight and reminds us of Einstein’s quote: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Free trade with meat from clear-felled tropical forests traded against combustion cars is pure insanity.
Which way should we row through this wave of nonsense? There is no way to flee from it. Freezing means drowning.
What kind of fight makes sense?
The rowers in Hokusai’s print look pretty calm. They seem to be part of the boat, ducking towards both boards to keep the balance. Rowing with so many hands needs a lot of discipline. How could we reach that state of mind and hand in the middle of chaos? It will definitely need faith, strategy and organisation.
To safely get through the wave we need strong mental health. We should not underestimate how deeply unsettled many of us are. Sleepwalking and sarcasm may help for a while. But stepping back from reality may only deepen our fear. We asked people working with us in rural Europe how they deal with the multiple crises they are currently facing.
We had conversations with people who are riding the wave of mental health issues in rural Europe. They all share one key message: isolation and depression grows; rural communities lose cohesion; and: we must help people from different opinion camps to meet and talk.
“We need to look more closely when others are struggling. Not just as professional helpers, of whom there are too few, but as neighbours and friends.”
– Regina Eichinger-Schönberger of the German Social Insurance for Agriculture, Horticulture and Forestry (SVLFG) and the National Suicide Prevention Programme
“It’s first and foremost about breaking the silence: If we talk and listen, we rebuild connections and we regain confidence in ourselves and in others.”
– Xavier Hamon, artisan cook and member of the support team of the municipality of Plessé, France
“When they cook, taste or eat together, they find out what really matters.”
– Ewa Smuk-Stratenwerth of the Ecological Folk High School in Grzybów, Poland, who has organised meetings between leftist vegan women from the city with conservative Christian women farmers, in order to tackle increasing polarisation in Poland.
[You can read our interview with Regina here. Look out for Xavier and Ewa’s interviews coming up on ARC2020.]
Ewa is right. Good food should be our course in the waves of political regression and polarisation in 2026. We are drowning in unhealthy food. Increasing food prices have distanced farmers and eaters even more. More and more people need food banks to survive, yet most farmers do not get fair prices for what they produce. Profit is made by discounters and supermarkets. This is not new, but has become worse.
So what can ARC do in 2026?
We will of course continue to evolve as an ecosystem, providing an open-source service for NGOs and activists advocating for good farming and food policies. We might invite our readers and partners to offer donations or participate in crowd funding to support our work. We will continue to produce knowledge and understanding – not just information – on agri-food, rural and related themes. We will offer space for publication of opinions of partner organisations and independent actors. And we will continue to offer moments for in-person thematic and strategic gatherings including a broad European network of local communities and activists.
But 2026 should also be the year for a broader European Gathering on the ingredients for local food systems on community level. The municipality of Plessé has established such a system; many other villages and small towns are trying the same. ARC supports new alliances of small rural enterprises, like farmer-breeder-miller-baker networks in Germany and France. France has a powerful network of local mayors who struggle for decentralisation of decision-making power to small towns and villages. The European Committee of the Regions might be helpful in hosting a conference on local critical infrastructure which helps farmers, bakers and local food enterprises to claw back the added value which rural regions produce but have lost in highly concentrated food industries.
Bringing good farming and food back to the public’s attention and activism, replacing the confrontation and polarisation we have seen in recent years, is a good start for 2026. Our annual European gatherings for rural resilience in France, Germany and Poland (the rural Weimar triangle) have demonstrated the potential to make local European food systems great again.
Strong, scary waves may rise against us. We will need to come closer together with like-minded rowers. Even the tallest waves will break at some point – or turn in our direction again. When that time comes, we should be prepared to ride them.
More
https://www.arc2020.eu/germany-minding-our-mental-health-take-a-closer-look-when-others-stumble/
Rural Resilience Gathering | Knowledge is the Power to Shape our Rural Futures Together
What hope on the horizon? From Farm to Fork to a grand bargain in 2026
Ireland | Feeding Ourselves, breaking new ground for the local food movement
Op-Ed | Pesticide lobby use farmers’ protests as cover for slashing EU safety regulations
EU Deal on GMO Deregulation: Hiding GMO Food While Claiming Patent Rights
