French 'farmerfluencer' Étienne Fourmont, who is using his YouTube and social media to make farmers' voices heard at a time when they are protesting heavily in France and the rest of Europe, told Euractiv about the urgent need to change the way farming is viewed.
The leader of the recently-founded "Alliance Rurale" party in France, Willy Schraen, told Euractiv in an interview that if he is elected as an MEP, he aims to create a 'rural affairs' group in the EU House with like-minded lawmakers.
In an interview with Euractiv, French Secretary of State for Biodiversity Sarah El Haïry reflected on the EU's progress this year, following the COP28 summit in Dubai, the adoption of France's national biodiversity strategy as well as the EU's pesticides directive and nature restoration law.
An EU-approved €1.5 billion buyout scheme for Dutch farmers to halve nitrogen emissions by 2030 has divided opinion, with some stakeholders questioning how to keep meeting targets decided in Brussels while stepping up production to meet demand.
The EU is taking steps to boost the production and use of renewable hydrogen, a low-carbon alternative to natural gas, in the fertiliser sector and beyond, according to Christian Holzleitner, Head of Unit for Low Carbon Solutions at DG CLIMA.
Ukraine has an effective control system on food safety and pesticides which should not be dragged into political squabbles about grain exports, Olha Shevchenko, acting head of Ukraine’s food safety body, told Euractiv in an interview.
Animal welfare should be explicitly mentioned in the title of a Commissioner in the next legislative mandate to make it a priority of the next EU executive and avoid the risks of having more animal testing in Europe, according to Green MEP Tilly Metz.
The EU's Nature Restoration Law is "obviously needed" and must not be blocked by the European Parliament, German climate activist Luisa Neubauer told EURACTIV in an interview on Tuesday (11 July) ahead of a crucial vote on the law.
Emergency funds from the EU agricultural reserve, such as those recently received by Poland and Hungary, should not be given out so lightly, Ophelia Nick, Parliamentary State Secretary at the German Agriculture Ministry, warned in an interview.
With its new packaging rules, the EU aims to curtail exponentially-growing waste. But for the food sector, the proposal has unintended ramifications that have so far stayed under the radar, lawmaker Ulrike Müller warned.
The number of farms implementing integrated pest management (IPM) in Italy has skyrocketed over the past few years. EURACTIV Italy spoke with Donato Rotundo from farmers' association Confagricoltura to learn more about the impact this has had and how this success can be built upon.
The disruption of grain deliveries from Ukraine can be a chance for African countries to step up food production at home, the African Union’s Commissioner for rural economy and agriculture, Josefa Sacko, told EURACTIV in an interview.
Withdrawing the original proposal for the post-2020 EU farming subsidy programme was never an option for the European Commission, the originator of the reform Phil Hogan told EURACTIV in an interview.
Public policy must be at the core of the project to develop smart villages in the EU, MEP Franc Bogovič has said, as an initiative on the EU’s long-term rural prospects moves forwards.
An ideologically driven EU packaging law based on rigid targets could end up endangering the food packaging and the food system value chain, Finnish MEP Elsi Katainen told EURACTIV in an interview.
Both food security and environmental sustainability for agri-food businesses depend on lower costs - particularly energy - for farmers, according to Luca Rigotti, president of the wine working group of the European farmers association COPA-COGECA.
Geographical indications (GIs) will not lose features that make them different from other Intellectual Property (IP) rights by moving competencies from the European Commission to the EU’s intellectual property office (EUIPO), its head told EURACTIV in an interview.
German women tend to benefit less than men from the support programmes of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), Juliane Vees, the first vice-president of the German Association of Women in Agriculture, told EURACTIV Germany in an interview.
Creating healthy and sustainable ecosystems in Europe is key to ensuring food security, as heatwaves worsen and Russia blocks grain exports out of Ukraine, the environment commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius told EURACTIV.
The COVID-19 crisis has underscored that there is no way to ensure human and animal health without wider consideration of environmental health, Monique Eloit, Director General of the World Organisation for Animal Health, told EURACTIV in an interview.
The European Union could "triple" the amount of biomass produced on a sustainable basis over the coming decades while helping restore land degraded by industrial pollution, poor agriculture, erosion and climate change, says André Faaij.
While grain has become a "means of war" and solidarity with Ukraine is a top priority right now, pressing the pause button on environmental and climate protection would be fatal because "climate crisis will not pause either", a senior official at the German agriculture ministry told EURACTIV.
Despite an adequate and friendly global response, the only option to restore grain exports from Ukraine is to win the war as Russia can not be trusted in any plan aimed at unblocking seaports in the South of the country, Ukraine's deputy agriculture minister told EURACTIV in an exclusive interview.
Agroecology is the necessary solution to face this problem and generate gains in production, agroecology researcher Xavier Reboud told EURACTIV at a European conference on phasing out of pesticides in Dijon.
