Berlin International Green Week opened its doors on the twentieth of January, and for Food for Europe it’s a great opportunity to discuss the European Union’s new Common Agricultural Policy, or CAP, with farmers, interest groups, and representatives of the EU institutions including the Commission and the Parliament – in...

Free school meals are a strategic lever to implement the right to food and nutrition in the EU, by ensuring all children have access to healthy and nutritious food, daily. Free school meals can also support the transition to sustainable food systems by linking school meals to small-scale farmers using...

Good public policies can ensure producers really benefit from Short Food Supply Chains Producers within Short Food Supply Chains (SFSCs) often achieve higher economic benefits and better social relations, while reducing negative impacts on the environment. Yet, the use of SFSCs does not guarantee better economic performance per se, as...

Austrian Operational Group looking for alternative, environmentally friendly control methods. Wireworms, the larvae of click beetles, cause major losses in potato production across Europe. The situation in recent years seems to be worsening due to climate change as Johannes Mayer, Austrian potato farmer explains: “Wireworm damage is more significant in drier...

FIAN International is a human rights organisation committed to the struggle of grassroots social movements around the globe to defend and protect the Right to Food and Nutrition and induce a paradigm shift sustained by food sovereignty principles. European Coordination Via Campesina (ECVC) is a confederation of unions and organisations...

Since local and regional governments (LRGs) have the mandate to procure food for public canteens in the EU, the purpose of this policy brief is to provide LRGs with insights on how to connect small-scale farmers with food tendering processes in legally compliant ways. LRGs can apply more inclusive sustainable...

This policy brief provides recommendations on how to achieve these objectives with a focus on three key areas: 1. How to link small-scale farmers with the public plate; 2. School meals as a powerful tool to address social equity (all school children and young people), health (tackling fast-growing child obesity)...

Livestock production is confronted with significant challenges across all dimensions of sustainability. There is an urgent need to identify sustainable livestock systems that are environmentally friendly, economically viable for farmers, and socially acceptable. To this end, diversity assessments and data-driven indicator-based sustainability assessments can be helpful tools. These two mutually...

In line with its transparency and monitoring requirements, the European Commission launched today an online dashboard presenting the targets set at national level by each Member State in its approved CAP Strategic Plan, as well targets at EU level. By exploring the interactive dashboard, users can find out for example about the...

One of the priorities for moving European rural youth forward is to create sustainable and high-quality rural jobs accessible to young people. Rural youth unemployment rates are higher than the average throughout the EU and rural employment opportunities tend to be relatively limited, with a prevalence of seasonal jobs.    Supporting youth...

Feeding Ourselves as an event grew out of the Cloughjordan Community Farm (CCF). CCF had itself as a member owned and operated CSA – Community Supported Agriculture – initiative 13 years ago. Then, this farm, which itself emerged from a newly established ecovillage, wanted to tell the world about this...

Another rural is possible! ARC2020 and friends were in Cloughjordan Ecovillage, Ireland on March 25-26 for the annual Feeding Ourselves gathering, which takes food and farming as an entry point for moving towards fairer, more caring communities. What are the ingredients to cook up transformative system change? How can we build...

In the new EU CAP Network, innovation, knowledge exchange and EIP-AGRI play a crucial role in sharing good practices and connecting people across EU agriculture, forestry and rural areas. The new edition of the Agrinnovation magazine offers inspiring stories, interviews, Operational Group updates and other news from across Europe.

SALSIFI (Supporting Advanced Learning for Stakeholders Involved in Sustainable Food systems Initiatives) is an Erasmus+ Project aiming to develop and implement an innovative transnational education programme reinforcing the capacity of CSA networks and civil servants at local, regional, national and EU levels to engage in collaborative public food policy-making processes. Four...

The programme EUR-Organic follows a holistic approach involving all aspects of organic food systems. The students profit from the distinct research foci of the partner universities, which in turn are reflected in the diverse specialisations available for students participating in the programme. None of the partner universities alone can offer such a wide...

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,...