Food, farming & nature
Our Food, Agriculture and Biodiversity team is campaigning for a fairer, healthier food system for people and nature based on food sovereignty, where local communities and farmers control the food we eat and how it’s grown – not big corporations.
Friends of the Earth member groups involved in this work: Estonia, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Slovenia, Bosnia, Austria, Netherlands, France, Spain, UK, Ireland, Switzerland, Malta, Cyprus.
I Choose GMO-free
To increase public and political support for maintaining a precautionary approach to the use of the new generation of GMOs (and other emerging agricultural technologies), including their release into the environment, we ran a wide campaign and communication outreach on new GMOs.
Although the EU Commission stated in 2022 that only so-called ‘sustainable’ new GMO crops would be promoted, its legislative proposal instead aligned with the misleading claims of industry lobby groups, disregarding strong arguments from civil society, farmers, and the food sector in favour of keeping all generations of GMOs strictly regulated and labelled. We engaged with media and decisions makers, highlighting the impacts of deregulating new GMOs on climate, the environment and corporate control.
Although the EU Commission stated in 2022 that only so-called ‘sustainable’ new GMO crops would be promoted, its legislative proposal instead aligned with the misleading claims of industry lobby groups, disregarding strong arguments from civil society, farmers, and the food sector in favour of keeping all generations of GMOs strictly regulated and labelled. We engaged with media and decisions makers, highlighting the impacts of deregulating new GMOs on climate, the environment and corporate control.
Towards a Pesticide Free EU
In 2023, despite the push from civil society, the EU officially abandoned the plans for a regulation aimed at achieving binding pesticide reduction, an outcome largely driven by an intense lobbying campaign from the pesticide industry.
Learning from this setback, we maintained an active coalition of European organisations and scaled up our efforts to expose corporate capture, shedding light on how big corporations influence policy-making at the expense of people and planet.
In the lead-up to the 2024 European Parliament elections, we intensified this work by scrutinising candidates’ position on pesticide policy, revealing who stood with farmers, citizens and nature, and who sided with the pesticide lobby. At the same time, we continued to build and amplify narratives around alternatives to pesticide use and the need for a just transition away from pesticides.
Photo credit: © The Left / Quentin Hugo
Learning from this setback, we maintained an active coalition of European organisations and scaled up our efforts to expose corporate capture, shedding light on how big corporations influence policy-making at the expense of people and planet.
In the lead-up to the 2024 European Parliament elections, we intensified this work by scrutinising candidates’ position on pesticide policy, revealing who stood with farmers, citizens and nature, and who sided with the pesticide lobby. At the same time, we continued to build and amplify narratives around alternatives to pesticide use and the need for a just transition away from pesticides.
Photo credit: © The Left / Quentin Hugo
Fighting Factory Farms
Over the past few decades, the food system in Europe has become increasingly dominated by factory ‘farms’ that confine tens of thousands of animals into tightly packed facilities. We put our focus on strengthening grassroots resistance. We worked to connect communities and NGOs resisting the expansion and building of animal factories, creating spaces to strategise, exchange knowledge, and share tools to be more effective in campaigning on the ground.
