Farming in Europe has been transformed over the last 70 years by policies, technologies and practices that sought to guarantee a stable supply of affordable food. But success has come at the cost of mounting environmental degradation. This CORDIS Results Pack highlights 11 EU-funded research projects that demonstrate the potential...

P-IRIS was based on the demand from Managing Authorities (MAs) to better support rural innovation in these regions. The initiative to address the issue through a project was taken during Euromontana’s General Assembly in November 2015. P-IRIS includes several members of our network: the County of Vestland (Norway), the Province of...

Helianthus annuus (sunflower) is an oilseed crop with multiple food and industrial uses, such as production of edible oil, the biofuel industry, the manufacture of soap and fodder production. Sunflower is the most important honey plant, considering the large areas cultivated with sunflower and the quality of nectar. Due to...

Access Agriculture Panorama No. 14 - September 2021 Newsletter

The number of women in farming has been slowly increasing in recent years. The most recent data (Eurostat 2016) suggests that, on average, 29% of farms across the EU are managed by a woman. But this data masks some considerable differences between countries. In Lithuania and Latvia, nearly half of all...

Se trata de una prioridad política, económica, social… Pero los impactos del cambio climático son ya una realidad que afecta muy especialmente a la producción y acceso a alimentos y que, por tanto, ponen en peligro nuestra seguridad alimentaria y nutricional, sobre todo de las comunidades más vulnerables. Como contrapartida, la producción ecológica y la...

To become more sustainable, Europe must diversify its agri-food systems. According to one EU project, this starts with promoting the cultivation and consumption of home-grown legumes. Food systems have a substantial carbon footprint, accounting for one third of greenhouse gas emissions globally. As such, there is an urgency for the sector...

In the higher valleys of the Rioja region in Spain, farmland abandonment is an increasing problem. An Operational Group is identifying the main reasons behind this issue and carrying out activities to bring new farmers to the area and regenerate fruit production. At the same time, these actions contribute to...

The need for, and the urgency of, a transition of our food system to face the triple challenges of conserving biodiversity, improving adaptation to climate change while reducing GHG emissions, and improving diets, is no longer questioned. Over the last 5 years, Iddri and AScA have explored the contribution of...

While the year began slowly, the total value of EU agri-food trade (exports plus imports) for January-July 2021 stood at €183.8 billion, a 3.2% increase on the corresponding period last year. Exports were almost 6% higher at €111.4 billion, with imports dropping marginally by 0.2% to €72.4 billion. This reflects...

The European database for organic seed has been developed within the EU project LIVESEED. Its objective is to create more transparency for the EU member states and for seed suppliers regarding available offers of organic seeds, and to increase the supply of organic seed in the EU member states and...

Smart Farming, the resource efficiency programme run by the Irish Farmers’ Association in partnership with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), will host an online seminar “Sources and Solutions”: The link between our soils and water quality this Wed from 8.30pm. During the seminar, a series of short information videos will be launched on how farmers can...

This recent edition of the EU Rural Review contains an interesting mix of articles and perspectives looking at the future resilience of rural areas in digital, environmental and social terms.   The content builds on the outcomes of the ENRD work on the Long Term Rural Vision and of Rural Vision Week. Authors highlight that, to deal...

The European Commission has provided support to the agri-food sector throughout the Covid-19 crisis through increased flexibility and specific market measures. More recently, the package of support measures for the wine sector was extended until mid-October 2021. This summer, the EU is seeing adverse weather conditions from floods to heat waves. Farmers are among the...

latest podcast episode focuses on the digitalisation of agriculture in the EU. We hear from one enterprising cereal farmer in Ireland who has seen his yields grow as the time he spends on repetitive tasks in the field declines, and speak to a scientist at the European Space Agency who...

The University of Groningen is presenting a summer school ''Designing sustainable landscapes within regional food systems'' that will hold between 30 August - 3 September 2021. The objective of the school is for participants to develop capacities and skills for the analysis and design of multifunctional agroecological landscapes within sustainable regional food systems,...

The European Green Deal is at the centre of the Commission’s policy agenda. Its prime objective is a sustainable, climate-neutral Europe by 2050, acting as a vehicle for investment and growth . The Green Deal emphasizes that it is ‘key’ to manage the transition towards a more sustainable food system,...

The report covers the EU in its current composition (EU-27). It presents the medium-term outlook for EU agricultural markets, income and environment to 2031, based on a set of macroeconomic assumptions deemed most plausible at the time of the analysis. Oil price, population forecasts (based on IHS Markit), the USD/EUR...

The future health of Europe’s people and the planet lies on our plate: the way in which food is farmed, fished, processed, distributed, valued, prepared, consumed and wasted must change to ensure that the environmental, social and economic sustainability of food become core assets of the EU’s food systems, along...

Climate action is vital. And yet there is a risk that, taken alone, climate action could mean those with economic power keep it, all the while avoiding the bigger, systemic changes required to face our social and environmental challenges. We argue here for climate action that works within a local...