Agriculture

Benjamin Joyeux interviews Indian activist Vandana Shiva about biodiversity, seed patents, and the commons.

There is a grave injustice at the heart of the global food system. Climate change has never been more prevalent, yet one of its principal perpetrators – the leading cause of deforestation, water consumption, species extinction, habitat loss, ocean dead zones and pollution, responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions (at least 14.5%) than all transport in the world combined – is being persistently ignored.

Nearly 30,000 people took to the streets of Berlin on January 18, 2014 to protest the industrialisation of farming and the E.U.-U.S Free Trade Agreement currently under negotiation. In addition to making their demands heard, the organisers gave a voice and a face to Agrarwende, a citizen movement that is gaining steam in Germany and that calls for a rethinking of agriculture.

Though many of the Commission’s reform proposals have been watered down, the Greens scored some notable successes in ensuring a ‘greening’ of the CAP. What are these, and what do they mean for European farming?

There is potential for organic agriculture in the Western Balkans.

What and how we eat has a profound impact on our culture, but changes in recent decades have profoundly changed our relationship with food, and not for the better. What are the costs of these changes, and can they be reversed?

One of the major drivers of change in the agricultural sector has been fluctuations in the price of different commodities. For developing countries, such changes have had a disastrous impact and urgent steps need to be taken to return their agricultural sectors to a sustainable footing.

If “you are what you eat” than what happens when you don’t eat? In Greece, the economic crisis is forcing a rethink of people’s relationship with food, and the consequences are positive.

Against the backdrop of Spain’s desperate economic situation, the organic industry is one source of positive news. However despite its potential, significant barriers to its development remain.

The German Greens won the premiership of the German land (region) of Baden-Württemberg in 2011, giving them a unique opportunity to implement green policies across a range of areas. For food and agriculture, this meant an ambitious strategy based on high ecological quality standards, versus the industrialisation of our natural resources.