‘Smart villages’ is about rural people who take the initiative to find practical solutions – both to the downsides and to the exciting new opportunities arising locally.

Open farm days are taking place a few time per year thanks to the members of Association of Private Farming of the Czech Republic. These farmers open their farms to vide public  with on-farm activities  - like a farm schools , cooking workshops , horse riding etc. which provide closer...

It was recently, in 2015, when the infectious lumpy skin disease first entered the Balkan Peninsula and started its rally by infecting cattle in several countries. Measures to control – or possibly eradicate – the disease differed in various countries, and a new FAO study assesses approaches in three of...

FAO, Japan and Turkey have inaugurated a vocational training programme for Syrian refugees and their Turkish host communities in Şanlıurfa and Kilis, where agriculture provides employment opportunities on a large scale. The project aims at improving participants’ skills and knowledge in high-demand areas of the local agricultural sector. Building on the...

Farm Hack is a community-led approach to the development, modification and sharing of designs for farm tools, machinery and other innovations. It emphasizes a farmer-to-farmer approach to learning and creates platforms for farmers to come together to ‘hack’ and apply their collective ingenuity in the development of technologies appropriate for...

The ongoing and prolonged drought situation in several EU countries is affecting the production of arable crops and animal feed, which could have an impact on farmer income, increase their input costs and potentially give rise to an animal welfare issues, if there is a shortage of fodder later in...

Young farmers in a number of EU countries have been severely affected by the dry weather conditions this spring and summer. In this press release from 30 August and following a CEJA working group during which delegates discussed the drought situation, CEJA urges the European Commission and national governments to...

Alfred Grand is an organic arable farmer near Tulln, Austria. Minimising tillage and using a rotational cropping system on his 90 ha farm is what he swears by to increase organic matter in his soil. He is part of the Austrian Operational Group BIOBO. Since 1998 Alfred has reduced tillage and...

President Emmanuel Macron launched the General State of Food (GSF), an investigation into the French agrifood system in the second half of 2017. Bringing together different food and farming stakeholders, the aim was to combat the various crises in the agricultural sector and work to build a healthy, sustainable and...

Against this background, and as a follow-up to the “Conference on the role of interbranch organisations in the food supply chain”, the department for agriculture and rural development  organised this conference on “The contribution of producer organisations to an efficient agri-food supply chain” with around 200 invited participants – technical...

As a first step towards the evaluation of the EU promotion policy for agricultural products, the European Commission has published a summary of the planned assessment, the so-called evaluation roadmap. The aim is to inform and seek feedback from citizens and stakeholders on the different steps of the evaluation. The European...

New research exploring women’s roles in fishing families officially gets going, as the Women in Fisheries project launches its new website. In the UK their vessels make up 80% of the nation’s fishing fleet yet they receive only 4% of the total national fishing quota. On the other side of the...

The Congress FOOD 2030: Towards sustainable agri-food systems will be held on 5-6 September 2018, as one of the major events to mark the 200th anniversary of the University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart. It will bring together experts, researchers and stakeholders from various disciplines with diverse experiences related to food systems.  It wants to...

Civil society organizations want to influence the future work of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Europe and Central Asia. With this in mind, a two-day consultation opens in Budapest today, with some 50 participants from several countries of the region. The Consultation will aim to concentrate positions among...

Horizon 2020 (H2020) is the largest source of public funding for research and innovation from the European Commission. It has a budget of around €3.7 billion for the Societal Challenge 2 (SC2) on ‘Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine, maritime and inland water research and the bioeconomy’ for 2014-2020....

Welcome to the final newsletter from the Farm-Success project!Since you last heard from us we have been carrying out the final adjustments, tests, and translations to our online training platform. We have also held several multiplier events across Europe in which young farmers and other stakeholders have discussed the importance of succession processes...

Current Europe-wide policies on renewable energy are not linked closely enough to rural development, according to a report by the European Court of Auditors, which took the Commission and member states to task for failing to take local needs into account. The report by the Court of Auditors has warned that...

FAO ’s three Regional Initiatives for Europe and Central Asia address interlinked issues to ensure the contribution of agriculture to achieve the universality of the Sustainable Development Goals. For this reason, technical teams in the region and at FAO headquarters work in close collaboration to support countries in achieving their...

Hearing in the European parliament on the state of play of the landing obligation before its full implementation in January 2019 proves lack lustre.

The monthy newsletter of the Low Impact Fishers of Europe