Agrifood Brief

In this special edition of the agrifood podcast, EURACTIV’s agrifood team takes a closer look at knowledge sharing in the agricultural sector - why is this so important, what challenges do farmers face in exchanging information on innovative approaches, and what projects already exist to help them overcome these? To dig deeper into the topic, we are joined by agroecological farmer Klarien Klingen, who is the co-founder of agroecological farmers association Toekomstboeren, Alice Minichini from the EU’s young farmers’ association CEJA, Ilias Sousis, CEO of WikiFarmer and DG AGRI’s Inge van Hoost.

This week, EURACTIV’s agrifood team explores what the EU-Africa summit holds for the agrifood sector, we are joined by Brendan Coolsaet, associate professor of environmental politics at the European school of political and social Sciences at Lille Catholic University, to talk about what he learned in his trip around Italy visiting farms, and, in honour of the fact that Valentine’s Day coincided with the EU-AU summit this week, we bring you some fun facts about chocolate.

This week is the week of pesticides, with both the leak of the Sustainable Use of Pesticides Directive and new rules aimed at accelerating the approval process of biopesticides. EURACTIV also hears from our own Julia Dahm who was on the ground at the agricultural ministers informal meeting in Strasbourg this week, and we hear from EURACTIV Slovakia’s Marián Koreň about the latest news on Slovakia’s missing national strategic plan for the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

This week, EURACTIV’s agrifood team brings you the latest about the timeline of the CAP national strategic plans approval, and we are joined by EURACTIV Germany’s Julia Dahm to talk about Commission’s plans to address food security within the EU in crisis situations. We also speak to Greek leftist MEP Petros Kokkalis about the first interinstitutional negotiations on the revision of the current agricultural statistics framework.

This week, EURACTIV France's Magdalena Pistorius joins EURACTIV's agrifood team to explain how French agricultural minister Julien Denormandie's debut speech under the French presidency was received in the European Parliament, we explore some of his main priorities in more depth, including carbon farming and trade reciprocity, and we speak to the newly elected Vice Chair of the European Parliament's agriculture committee, Benoît Biteau, about his ambitions for the role and the importance of strengthening collaboration between the ENVI and AGRI committees.

This week, EURACTIV's agrifood team talks about the first AGRIFISH Council under the French Presidency (including anecdotes from inside the building), including issues in the pig sector as well as the fallout from the Belarus food embargo, and we are joined by EURACTIV Germany's Julia Dahm together with Green MEP Tilly Metz to hear what happened in this week's plenary vote on animal welfare during transport.

Welcome back! For our first podcast of 2022, EURACTIV’s agrifood news team brings you up to speed with where we’re at on the CAP national strategic plans, we discuss tensions between wolves and EU farmers with the help of Dutch ecologist and wolf expert Glenn Lelieveld and we explore why upcoming changes in geographical indications have sparked some controversy.

In the last EURACTIV agrifood podcast of 2021, EURACTIV's agrifood news team takes a trip down memory lane to discuss the biggests moments and themes from 2021, including the conclusion of the CAP and the thawing of EU-US relations when it comes to agrifood, and we also take a look at the key things coming up on the menu in 2022. 

This week, EURACTIV takes a look at the outcome of the vote on a report on live transport of animals, we explore the Commission's increasingly favorable stance to gene editing and we take a look at a new NGO report which flags concerns over the level of ambition in member states' eco-schemes with the help of BirdLife Europe's Honey Kohan.

This week, EURACTIV’s Natasha Foote is joined by EURACTIV France’s Magdalena Pistorius to discuss how the final vote on the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) went down this week in Strasbourg, including reactions and next steps for the farming subsidy programme.