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,...

Topics include Animal welfare; Funding opportunities for academia; Coop&Grow 2: Multifund sustainable LDSs; Cities2030 meeting & other relevant topics.

Rapeseed is usually sown in August together with winter sensitive legumes (Alexandrian clover, lentils, field beans and peas) acting as companion plants limiting weed development. In our case, we add white clover (WC) to the seeds mixture as a winter persistent legume that will grow slowly under the rapeseed and...

In 2021, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nation (FAO) launched the global Digital Villages Initiative to promote digital innovations to rural communities. Now the initiative is being scaled up in Europe and Central Asia, aiming to improve livelihoods, wellbeing, and social cohesion in this region. The virtual event...

The first meeting of the Thematic Group (TG) enabled members to share their insights on networking and engagement in the design of CAP Strategic Plans (CSPs). Members also explored approaches to networking, engagement and governance in CAP implementation.

A sunny day in March is the one chosen for cutting off the Gatinho watermelons (mini striped) that Esther Molina has cultivated on her organic greenhouse farm in Los Grillos without the use of insecticides thanks to conservation biological control. Esther is one of the farmers of the Spanish greenhouse...

'Innovation & knowledge exchange | EIP-AGRI’'s role is to facilitate communication and cooperation between those with a keen interest in sharing knowledge and innovative ideas for sustainable agriculture, forestry and rural areas. In the current issue, May 2023 - biodiversity

In 1994, UPA began the adventure of publishing a Yearbook of Family Farming. The objective was simple, although ambitious: to collect in an annual work the main data, ideas and proposals of this production model, which in the Union of Small Farmers and Ranchers we have defended since our origin. Now,...

In this chapter we argue that industrial food production, distribution and consumption play a central role in perpetuating the present intersecting crises of poor health, biodiversity loss, climate change and inequality. At the centre of our argument lies a contention that multiple rifts (e.g. between humans and nature, urban and...

Along with Greece, Italy and Portugal, Spain is the country in continental Europe that is faced with the largest percentage of desertification and the greatest water shortages.Next to climate change, intensive and conventional farming are the main causes of this catastrophic form of land degradation. According to the European Commission,...

The efforts of agroecology-oriented farmers and peasants’ orga-nizations have been studied in depth in relation to their political expression, but less so with regard to the forms they adopt to strengthen the socio-economic viability of small- and medium- sized farms within sustainable food systems. Whilst farmers’ self- organization represents a...

Rural women face double discrimination. The first is directed against the rural areas, which are marginalized by public policies, are invisible in relevant debates, ridiculed and blamed at for its social and economic problems, poverty, lack of education, migration and many other consequences of historical and systemic discrimination. The second...