Sofia, Bulgaria - Visitors to the first Terra Madre Balkans event, which opened in Sofia today, were greeted with specialty cheeses, artisan breads, jam and honey. The food fair for small-scale farmers and producers, devised by the organization Slow Food and supported by WWF, kicked off in the Botanical Garden...

Le pastoralisme est une des pratiques les plus anciennes de l’activité humaine. Il produit des paysages spécifiques, à la fois par la marque qu'il imprime au territoire et par les traditions culturelles matérielles et immatérielles qui leur sont associées. Exposé à des mutations profondes dans certaines régions, en voie de...

The motivation behind the ENRD's consideration of this topic and this background paper, which raises some key issues for further debate, is two-fold. Firstly, the last two enlargements in 2004 and 2007 brought millions of small farms into the EU, most of which are either subsistence farms (SFs) or semi-subsistence...

Romanian rural areas contain the highest level of agricultural workers in the European Union, resulting in the challenge of stimulating non-agricultural employment. This paper uses the methodology of policy evaluation to analyse the influence of 3 measures the CAP. From an objectives tree to reveal the objectives of the programme...

During the last decades, droughts have become more frequent in the Mediterranean, West Asia and North African countries, and have had negative socio-economic impacts which are frequently linked to a high exploitation of available water resources. The Fourth Assessment Report of the International Panel on Climate Change states that extreme...

Take a tour, accompanied by curious sheep and geese, of Mark Cooper's self-sufficient small farm. Over several years, he transformed a rundown house and hillsides of berry brambles into pasture and gardens where he produces and preserves most of his family's food. Visit the Goose Grotto in a constructed pond,...

The Food Security Thematic Programme (FSTP) is a programme of the European Union (EU) that aims ―to improve food security in favour of the poorest and the most vulnerable, and contribute to achieving the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG), through a set of actions which ensure overall coherence, complementarity and...

Describes trends in direct selling by farmers in Italy by region, product and place of sale. Proposes a model of variables that affect the probability of a farmer adopting direct sales: farmer (gender, age, off-farm income); farm (farm type, work units, standard gross margin) and location (region, altimetry, less favoured...

Romania is a country of peasants, with a long deep history in peasant agriculture, which effects everything in the country, including its art, culture, and the way Romanians think. This has survived despite the best efforts of past empires and communists to destroy it. Today peasant culture remains the bedrock...

Bees are the most important pollinators in Europe. We studied bee assemblages on 7 pairs of extensively and intensively grazed sites in three lowland grassland types in Hungary. No chemicals were applied on the grasslands. The bees were collected using sweep net surveys and 1 m wide transect surveys in...

Position and Perspectives of Small Farms with Respect to the Structure Development of Subsequent Vertical Link Blažková, I., Sadílek, T. (2009). Proceedings of 111th Seminar, June 26-27, 2009, Canterbury, UK The article describes the position and perspectives of small farms’ production sales with respect to the structure development of subsequent vertical...

Mediterra 2009, the eleventh Ciheam annual report, has been drawn up in the context of an innovative regional approach and has the special feature of uniting the efforts of the Ciheam − the only intergovernmental organisation in the Mediterranean Basin − and the Blue Plan, the Regional Activity Centre of...

Permanent pastures are therein defined as utilized agricultural area used permanently for 5 or more years through cultivation (sowing) of grass fodder crops or through natural regeneration and is not included in the farm crop rotation. This area can be used for either grazing or mowing. All grass species that...

Estonia falls into the Nemoral and Boreal biogeographical zones – regions naturally dominated by coniferous forests, with extensive mires. Farmers in at least certain parts in Estonia, as in other countries in these zones, traditionally made use of all the possible forage resources available to them to tide their animals...

Proposing a coherent and unified definition of permanent pastures in France is not easy in the detail neither from technical nor from administrative point of view. Starting from usual and specialised dictionaries, the definition of a “pasture” shows a certain blur between a general definition in which a pasture is...

The cross-compliance booklet for Northern Ireland states “Permanent pasture is defined as permanent grassland which is over five years old which has been declared on the Area Aid application in 2003. Land which has been ploughed and reseeded within the same year may be defined as permanent pasture”.

Permanent pastures (PP) of various types dominate the Scottish agricultural landscape. Recent census-based statistics show that permanent pastures in the widest sense account for 82% of Scotland’s farmland, making up an estimated 75% of all land claimed in IACS.

Sweden has a tradition of managing semi-natural pastures with a relatively high amount of trees and bushes. Some of the typical habitats also have low fodder value, but it is often not correlated with tree density. These pastures are mainly alvar grazing (habitat type 6280, Nordic alvar and Pre-Cambrian calcareous...

Agroecology involves various approaches to solve actual challenges of agricultural production. Though agroecology initially dealt primarily with crop production and protection aspects, in recent decades new dimensions such as environmental, social, economic, ethical and development issues are becoming relevant. Today, the term ‘agroecology’ means either a scientific discipline, agricultural practice,...

This paper provides a summary of the results of an analytical review of EU Member States support for mountain areas under EAFRD (2007-2013). The analysis was conducted by the ENRD Contact Point. The main purpose of the review was to provide an overview of the different RD support measures available...