Food is fundamental to life and the majority of the food that we eat comes from Europe’s rural areas. Food priorities for the European Union (EU) include safeguarding food supplies and providing European citizens with quality, value and a diversity of food which is produced sustainably3 . The Common Agricultural...

This project supports the valorization of local species through an inclusive community initiative bringing together catering students, fishermen and local enterprises around a small but promising project to raise awareness and promote local and sustainable sourcing. Around 130 fishermen operate on the local Lake Vänern, the largest freshwater lake in...

Throughout Europe many examples exist to highlight how farmers and other rural businesses can  succeed in entering new market places. Success factors involved in the process include  identifying a viable market niche, personal perseverance, and making good use of rural development assistance. One such case is evident in Sweden where...

"So far, we are not slaughtering ourselves, but we sell all of our jointed lamb meat in our farm shop," says 27 year old Otto Ramsay. He was grateful to receive SEK 200,000 as start-up support from the Rural Development Programme last year, in order to rebuild the old stables...

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...

Family farming has been in focus in Sweden as well as in all traditional European agricultural policy. However the concept appears in many different contexts, it can denote both a statistically defined size or institutional form of agricultural production, or an economically defined firm with certain advantages vis a vis...