Agrifood Brief

EURACTIV's agrifood team brings you the latest from Strasbourg where MEPs voted their position on two important files for the future of the EU’s agriculture: the industrial emissions directive and the nature restoration law. We take a deep dive into the latter along with EURACTIV’s very own energy and environment reporter Kira Taylor and Olliver Moore, editor-in-chief of ARC2020.

This week, EURACTIV talks you through everything you need to know on the presentation of the Commission’s ‘sustainable use of natural resources’, and EURACTIV’s Natasha Foote talks with Vice President Frans Timmermans about his message to farmers amid rising tensions over the EU’s nature restoration plans and his vision for the future structure of the institutions dealing with food policy.

This week, EURACTIV's agrifood team debriefs the agriculture ministers' meeting in Luxembourg and looks ahead at the "Food and Biodiversity Package," a set of legislative proposals expected from the European Commission on Wednesday. Over in New York, Gerardo Fortuna spoke to Bayer’s Rodrigo Santos and Axel Trautwein about regenerative agriculture and different regulatory approaches to agricultural policies.

This week, EURACTIV's agrifood team talks you through the leaked draft of one of the most contentious proposals from the European Commission in the past months: gene editing. EURACTIV's Paula Andres talks to Mette Uldahl, Vice President of the Federation of Veterinarians of Europe, about the state of animal welfare in EU farms and what is lacking.

This week, EURACTIV’s agrifood team brings you an exclusive interview with Spain’s agriculture minister, Luis Planas, who details the country’s agricultural priorities ahead of the Spanish presidency starting in July. We also talk you through a leak of an additional Commission study on the EU’s plans to slash the use and risk of pesticides in half by 2030, which was requested by EU member states, and last week’s confusion over the Parliamentary vote on the EU’s nature restoration law.

This week, EURACTIV's agrifood team talks you through the EU's decision to extend trade restrictions on select agricultural commodities coming from Ukraine and why this has proven controversial on both sides, and Gerardo Fortuna, together with EURACTIV's very own Transport Editor Sean Goulding, speaks with Indonesia's coordinating minister for economic affairs, Airlangga Hartanto, about palm oil.

This week, EURACTIV’s agrifood team talks you through the controversies at a recent meeting of EU agriculture ministers, including how the EU’s agriculture Commissioner is increasingly prioritising Polish issues, and discusses the pushback to the EU’s nature restoration law, both within the institution and around it. EURACTIV’s Julia Dahm also speaks to Annette Schneegans and Kerstin Rosenow from the Commission’s DG AGRI about the EU’s upcoming soil health law.

This week, EURACTIV’s agrifood team walks you through two key votes in the European Parliament on the nature restoration law and EU rules to slash industrial emissions and EURACTIV’s Natasha Foote speaks with Helmut Burtscher-Schaden from the Austrian environmental NGO GLOBAL 2000 about how the environmental exemptions in the CAP, which were taken to help boost food production, failed to live up to their promises.

This week, EURACTIV's agrifood team brings you to a young farmers' conference discussing sustainability in agriculture, where EURACTIV also spoke to EU's Green Deal chief Frans Timmermans. EURACTIV's Julia Dahm walks you through the potential voluntary animal welfare labelling system in the context of the upcoming revision of the Commission's animal welfare rules.

This week, EURACTIV's agrifood team brings you all you need to know on the centre-right's attack on the agricultural parts of the EU Green Deal, including the EU's plans to slash the use and risk of pesticides and the EU's nature restoration law, and EURACTIV's Natasha Foote speaks to liberal MEP and chair of the European Parliament's environment committee, Pascal Canfin, to hear his take on the development.

This week, EURACTIV’s agrifood team tells the story of a Portuguese delicacy that has a strong, unsuspecting link with a foundational moment of the EU’s integration process. We also spoke with French liberal MEP Irène Tolleret about a proposal filed by a coalition of EU lawmakers to proclaim 2024 as the European Year devoted to ‘sustainable and resilient food systems’.

This week, EURACTIV’s Natasha Foote explores the fallout of the unilateral decision of frontline EU countries to ban agricultural imports from Ukraine with the help of Ukraine’s deputy agricultural minister, Markiyan Dmytrasevych, who explains the impact of the decision on Ukrainian farmers and how he sees it playing into Russia’s hands. EURACTIV also speaks with Romanian agricultural expert, Cezar Gheorghe, who talks us through the lead up to this decision and what he thinks the future holds.

This week, EURACTIV’s agrifood editor Gerardo Fortuna walks you through the key issues around the controversial ban from Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia on the import of agricultural goods from Ukraine. EURACTIV’s Paula Andrés talks about a leaked impact assessment on the ongoing animal welfare legislation revision and interviews Eva Lindström, a member of the European Court of Auditors who led a new review on live animal transport in the EU.

This week, EURACTIV’s agrifood team talks you through the main things to keep an eye on in the European Parliament plenary session in Strasbourg, and EURACTIV’s Paula Andrés explores the water politics of the Spanish National Park of Doñana, which has recently become the epicentre of a clash between local fruit producers, environmentalists, and national and regional authorities.

This week, EURACTIV’s agrifood OG’s talk about the divides in the Commission and the increasing marginalisation of EU Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski, and EURACTIV’s Natasha Foote talks reflects on her recent trip to Ireland to the ‘Feeding Ourselves’ gathering and the issues facing the agrifood sector in the country, including soaring land prices and finding markets for organic produce.

This week, EURACTIV’s Agrifood team brings you the latest from the European Council where UN Secretary-General António Guterres asked EU leaders to lift sanctions on Belarus fertiliser potash. We also talked about the Commission’s decision to trigger the agriculture reserve to support Poland, Bulgaria, and Romania in coping with increased imports of cereals and oilseeds coming from neighbouring Ukraine.

This week, EURACTIV’s Agrifood team brings you the latest on the industrial emissions directive (IED) and leads you through the agenda of this week’s Agrifish Council with a focus on Mercosur talks in Europe. EURACTIV’s Julia Dahm speaks with Tadeja Vidmar, a beekeeper and small farmer from Slovenia who is the current honey queen as elected by the Slovenian beekeepers' association.

This week, EURACTIV discusses a leaked draft of EU member states’ compromise text on the industrial emissions directive, and we hear from EU Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski for his take on the controversies surrounding the directive. We also speak with Isabel Paliotta, policy officer at the European environmental bureau, for her take on a leak of the impact assessment on the upcoming sustainable food systems (SFS) law proposal.

This week, EURACTIV's Agrifood news team reports from a large-scale Flemish farmers' protest in Brussels and Natasha Foote speaks with Sybren Vos, a team leader at the European Food Safety Agency's Plant Health division, to learn more about the first appearance of the fall armyworm in Europe - a pest which can damage and destroy a wide variety of crops and has already wreaked havoc across Africa and Asia.