The European Commission with the aim of building sustainable food systems together will hold an annual meeting of stakeholders to help shape the EU’s path towards sustainable food systems (14th-15th October).

That’s why, the actors of the food value chain, public authorities, international organizations and civil society, as well as other citizens and interested public are invited to join the debate every year and contribute to the implementation. from farm to fork strategy.

The event will also provide a forum on the challenges and opportunities linked to the transition to sustainable food systems, as well as possible additional areas for intervention.

You can check the event programme by clicking on the folowing button

Today, the CONSOLE project partners – according to the World Agriculture Day, want to honour one of the oldest activities for the subsistence of humanity: Agriculture.

On September 9th, World Agriculture Day is celebrated, an activity of great importance for the development of both families and economies in the world, and which has been especially important in times of pandemic.

What is agriculture?

Since the Neolithic Revolution, human beings have developed a set of activities related to the cultivation of the land and the treatment of the soil for the production and obtaining of Food (e.g., vegetables, the vegetables), fibres (e.g., linen, cotton), and so on.

Already in the Middle Ages, some innovations were applied, through new forms of production (such as irrigation), increasing crops and the variety of agricultural products.

Until very recently, agriculture has been the life support of the economy of the countries of Europe (and indeed of the whole world) where around 80% of the labour force was employed.

By then, everyone shared the work, men, women and children. There are many who claim that it was a society with environmental balance and human lived in harmony with the land, water, forests, animals; both domestic and wild. Because there was hardly any waste generated, every last resource was used, and even the organic remains.

The forests were cared for. The scrubland was used for heating and furnaces, and the trees provided wood, controlling its felling. There were almost no fires. The rivers and fountains had clear, uncontaminated water and the children bathed in rivers, ponds and ditches, without problems.

In the farmers’ house there were chickens, rabbits, pigs, and even sheep and goats in many cases. They did not know or use herbicides and insecticides. Everything was recycled and reused.

However, at present the agricultural sector has state-of-the-art machinery and technology that facilitates tillage, cultivation and harvesting, considerably increasing production levels and the quality of its products, satisfying the consumption needs of families at the level world. However, it has also caused adverse effects (soil erosion and compaction, loss of biodiversity, emission of pollutants, etc.).

Some advances in agriculture

The primary sector has made notable advances in improving production techniques and methods, as well as in the quality of food. Among them, it can highlight:

• GPS technology for the measurement, registration and calculation of land area.
• Temperature and humidity sensors, for the measurement of various Vegetation Indices and/or chlorophyll content, in order to minimize the impact of the soil and climate during the plant growth stage and production, detecting the vegetation content and the amount of nitrogen in the crops.
• Use of drones to obtain data such as water saturation levels, vegetative and water stress, plant height and determine the biomass of crops.
• GIS and Remote Sensing software applied to agriculture, for data collection, temperature, climatic and soil conditions, crop yield (…).

How to celebrate this world day?

On World Agriculture Day, activities, events and conferences are held to expose the changes, advances and contributions of agriculture in the whole world.

We would like to highlight the excellent workshop developed by the partners of the sister project EFFECT in which the partners of the CONSOLE and CONTRACTS projects have also participated, contributing our experiences and allowing us to advance together.

Although organic farming has been around since the 1960s[1] (Pinton and Zanoli, 2000), it is not until the mid-1980s that it grew significantly, and in the 1990s when it experienced a breakthrough in Europe. (Foster and Lampkin 1999a, 1999b). The reasons are the growing public interest in organic farming, political support, increased consumer demand, animal health, food safety and economic problems in the conventional agricultural sector.

Labels emerged as a means to avoid confusion between products from different production practices and as a basis for the development of organic farming in society (Michelsen, J. 2001)

As a result of this new way of producing, European countries are forced to create rules to regulate the situation.

For example, France was the first country to recognize organic farming in the political context with the Agricultural Law No. 80502 in 1980; and they introduced the first eco-label for organic products four years later.

For its part, in Austria, the initiative for the regulation of organic products appeared in 1983, with the Austrian Codex Alimentarius (Michelsen et al., 2001). Denmark, in 1987, introduced the criteria and public certification of organic production.

Thus, before 1991 most of the current EU countries (except Greece) had regulated organic farming.

The European Union was quick to introduce a series of norms (EU Regulation 2092/91, in 1999 supplemented by common rules for organic livestock production: EU Regulation 1804/99); as well as financial support for those farmers who took advantage of the measures that accompanied the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

Starting with the 1992 CAP reform, with the introduction of a broad support program (EC Reg. 2078/92), these measures were intensified with the following CAP reforms, currently reaching strong growth and dynamic important in agricultural production and in the food market.

The objective of these regulations was to encourage farmers and ranchers in the Member States to offer a subsidy scheme to convert or maintain agricultural production methods, causing positive effects on the environment.

And thanks to these regulations, the increase in organic farming has reached almost 13.8 million hectares, representing 8.5% of total agricultural land (2019; EUROSTAT, 2021; Figure 1); mostly represented in the states of Austria (25.3%), Sweden (20.4%) and Estonia (22.3%); in contrast to the easternmost countries of Europe, Norway (4.6%), the United Kingdom (2.6%) and Ireland (0.4%).

References

Padel and Lampkin, 2007. The Development of Government Suppot for Organic Farming in Europe. In: Organic Farming. An International History. Cabi (Edit);

Michelsen J. 2001. Recent development and political acceptances of organic farming in Europe. Sociology Ruralis. 41. 3-19;

Pinton, R., Zanoli., R. 2000. Organic farming in Italy. http://www.organic-europe.net, 30.3.2000. Stiftung Ökologie & Landbau (Edit).Link

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[1] Some authors highlight the importance of Italy as a pioneer in the development of organic farming