El último Pleno de las Cortes de Castilla-La Mancha ha aprobado en su sesión de este jueves la ‘Ley de Agricultura familiar y acceso a la tierra’, además del Reglamento de la Cámara de Cuentas, con lo que la X Legislatura ha culminado con la aprobación de 46 leyes y...

In 2013 the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) enabled groups of farmers to be applicants and final beneficiaries of Agri-environmental schemes (AES). The Dutch government went one step further, ruling that only groups of farmers (farmer collectives) could be beneficiaries of AES. The changing role of farmer groups or farmer...

Family farms dominate the structure of EU agriculture in terms of the number of holdings, their contribution to agricultural employment and, to a lesser degree, the area of land that they cultivate and the value of the output they generate. 

A well designed redistributive payment is an essential tool to reduce inequalities among CAP beneficiaries and farming systems. But as is often the case, the best design strongly depends on national and regional specificities. The Czech Republic’s approach to the redistributive payment is a good example of that. The Czech...

Increases in organic production contribute significantly to reducing the use of chemical fertilisers, pesticides and antimicrobials and have positive effects on our climate, the environment, biodiversity and animal welfare. That is why organic production has been identified as playing a key role in achieving the objectives of the European Green Deal,...

Topics include Animal welfare; Funding opportunities for academia; Coop&Grow 2: Multifund sustainable LDSs; Cities2030 meeting & other relevant topics.

Rapeseed is usually sown in August together with winter sensitive legumes (Alexandrian clover, lentils, field beans and peas) acting as companion plants limiting weed development. In our case, we add white clover (WC) to the seeds mixture as a winter persistent legume that will grow slowly under the rapeseed and...

In 2021, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nation (FAO) launched the global Digital Villages Initiative to promote digital innovations to rural communities. Now the initiative is being scaled up in Europe and Central Asia, aiming to improve livelihoods, wellbeing, and social cohesion in this region. The virtual event...

The first meeting of the Thematic Group (TG) enabled members to share their insights on networking and engagement in the design of CAP Strategic Plans (CSPs). Members also explored approaches to networking, engagement and governance in CAP implementation.

A sunny day in March is the one chosen for cutting off the Gatinho watermelons (mini striped) that Esther Molina has cultivated on her organic greenhouse farm in Los Grillos without the use of insecticides thanks to conservation biological control. Esther is one of the farmers of the Spanish greenhouse...

'Innovation & knowledge exchange | EIP-AGRI’'s role is to facilitate communication and cooperation between those with a keen interest in sharing knowledge and innovative ideas for sustainable agriculture, forestry and rural areas. In the current issue, May 2023 - biodiversity

In 1994, UPA began the adventure of publishing a Yearbook of Family Farming. The objective was simple, although ambitious: to collect in an annual work the main data, ideas and proposals of this production model, which in the Union of Small Farmers and Ranchers we have defended since our origin. Now,...

In this chapter we argue that industrial food production, distribution and consumption play a central role in perpetuating the present intersecting crises of poor health, biodiversity loss, climate change and inequality. At the centre of our argument lies a contention that multiple rifts (e.g. between humans and nature, urban and...

Along with Greece, Italy and Portugal, Spain is the country in continental Europe that is faced with the largest percentage of desertification and the greatest water shortages.Next to climate change, intensive and conventional farming are the main causes of this catastrophic form of land degradation. According to the European Commission,...

The efforts of agroecology-oriented farmers and peasants’ orga-nizations have been studied in depth in relation to their political expression, but less so with regard to the forms they adopt to strengthen the socio-economic viability of small- and medium- sized farms within sustainable food systems. Whilst farmers’ self- organization represents a...

Rural women face double discrimination. The first is directed against the rural areas, which are marginalized by public policies, are invisible in relevant debates, ridiculed and blamed at for its social and economic problems, poverty, lack of education, migration and many other consequences of historical and systemic discrimination. The second...

Agroforestry (AF) and mixed farming (MF) are two multifunctional land use systems that harbor an untapped potential for future climate mitigation, however, they remain outside of the norm. This review collected and analyzed the policy landscape for AF and MF in 19 European countries. The results show that while the...

Following the 2021 United Nations Food System Summit call for implementing nature-positive production, this document provides an overview on the conceptual, theoretical and operational aspects of nature-positive production agriculture. The concept of nature-positive production revolves around the possible synergies between ecosystem restoration and food/biomass production and among biodiversity, nature and agriculture....

The Geodata and Technologies for the Common Agricultural Policy (GTCAP) team at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) has devoted the last quarter-century developing the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) control mechanisms and assisting with the implementation of compatible innovative technologies for the CAP. In recent years GTCAP’s research and development work...

Summer 2023. 2 young filmmakers travelled through Europe visiting seed producers at their workplaces and experiencing first-hand how important it is to preserve this diversity in Europe. The short documentary gives a voice to these small-scale seed producers and seed savers from across Europe, with beautiful footage shot in Ireland,...