The outbreak of, and the last two years of the COVID-19 pandemic disease showed more than ever how crucial it is to create and maintain food system’s sustainability and equitability. But how to do so? During the pandemic, one in three people have gone hungry. Agriculture and land use take around one quarter of the total greenhouses emission, having devastating effects on biodiversity and climate change. This while considering that our demand for food is expected to rise [...]

Tweets that the European Agricultural Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski has posted on his profile last month have sparked quite some debate among the agricultural community. In those posts Wojciechowski has expressed his position, which seems to favour small and organic farming over industrial or conventional ones. Examples cite: “Everyone has the right to defend the intensive/industrial methods of animal husbandry, but one can’t say that in this way he/she defends the rural areas and farmers. Large-scale breeding is not [...]

The annual report presented on February 24th by the German agriculture minister Julia Klöckner  casts light on a worrying truth: forests are dying, in Germany as in the rest of Europe. 2020 has been a challenging year for trees too, as never before so many species have died. Up to four in five trees among the spruces, pines, oaks and beeches examined have thinning crowns or are somehow damaged. Climate change is definitely exacerbating the problem, depleting the [...]

In times when a pandemic has crippled the global economy and our health, it is definitely the moment to plan our future more wisely, in order to grow in resilience and let opportunities arise organically. Talking about organic matters the European Commission, after what the Farm to Fork strategy (F2F) is promised to look like, seems very keen to promote a stronger, more resilient food production in Europe. This would mean also counting on young farmers and making [...]

On May 20, the European Commission has presented its newer flagship food policy Farm to Fork (F2F), confirming the intention of further focusing on the sustainability of European food chains. The F2F strategy is so far divided into 27 actions, organized by four macro areas: i) Sustainable Food production, ii) Sustainable Food processing and Distribution, iii) Sustainable Food Consumption, and iv) Food Loss & Waste Prevention. One can see the pattern, or rather, the “shape” of such conceptualization, [...]

If you are in one of the countries applying restrictive measures in face of the COVID-19 virus, you are likely to have seen at least one of the following when buying for your food supplies: police asking you for the self-certificate you need when going to grocery shopping, bringing shopping to relatives, just returning from the shopping; supermarkets emptied out from toilet paper and dry pasta; a certain feeling of judgment when purchasing more than 5 tins of [...]

The problem of food waste is such not only because of its staggering amount worldwide, but also because of the way we are dealing with it. In Europe, each year 88 tons of food are wasted – approximately 173 kg per person. The biggest waste comes from the Netherlands (541 kg/person) and the lowest from Slovenia (72 kg); however, the numbers are still too big and actions still too little on the matter overall. This is especially shocking [...]

In the project eTOMATO, we define the dimensions of Multifunctional Agriculture as relating to Rural Tourism, Social and Didactic Farming, and Short Food Supply Chain. These are the most prominent categories of MA but, as underlined by Renting et al. (2009), Tripathi et al. (2015) and Padmos (2019) MA also work in the dimension of Nature Preservation or Management. The graph as shown below developed by Tripathi et al. (2015) better summarizes the dimensions of MA as well [...]