*[Enwl-eng] The end of European agriculture?

[enwl]

                  Europe Edition - Today's top story: French tractor 
protests are the latest rebellion of EU farmers against unfair competition 
and red tape – will their strategy pay off? View in browser
                   Europe Edition | 1 February 2024







                  It’s not just the motorways linking to Paris: be it Rennes 
or Bordeaux, Nîmes or Toulouse, French farmers are blockading more than 100 
roads in the country. Similar events are taking place across Belgium and 
Italy at the time of writing, with grievances over the costs of 
carbon-cutting targets, towering paperwork, low wages and unfair 
competition.

                  “Sure, I’d be up for joining them for a bit of mayhem if I 
were still in business,” Didier, the 63-year-old father of my childhood 
friend from Brittany tells me over the phone. In the 1990s, he ran a pig 
farm with 300 animals in Côtes-d'Armor, operating under the Label Rouge, a 
guarantee of quality particularly favoured by Italians. But beset by 
increasingly complex regulations and low returns, he closed shop in the 
2000s. He is now in construction. “Agriculture is finished,” he said. “I don’t 
believe in it anymore”.

                  Didier’s testimonial echoes those collected by management 
academic Sandrine Benoist. Since 2019, she has been following 42 farmers in 
central France, watching them juggle the contradictions created by demands 
of ever-lower prices and greater output, all while taking on the burden of 
environmental norms. A long-time observer of farmers’ protests, Benoist 
notes that while such movements have secured short-term wins, up to now they’ve 
failed to provoke the structural change farmers are after. So what’s the 
point of them? She asks provocatively in this article.

                  Von der Leyen will be attempting to work through some of 
these tensions at the EU’s strategic dialogue on the future of farming. If 
only bumblebees could also be offered a seat at the table. This week, we 
bring you pioneering research on how these pollinators are reacting to the 
cocktail of pesticides they are exposed to in the countryside. While 
previous studies had either been carried out in labs or, in the case of 
rarer field-based experiments, focused on single compounds, this new study 
examines hundreds of pesticides on 106 sites across Europe.

                  As you read these words, your larynx is likely carrying 
out tiny movements. I say “likely”, as not everyone has an “inner speech,” 
the voice resonating in one’s head as one reads or thinks. Philosopher 
Daniel Gregory has spent the past years attempting to grasp the nature of 
this silent voice in the mind. Is it silent speech? Imagined? Or something 
else? Some answers – and many more questions – here.

                          Natalie Sauer

                        Editor, The Conversation Europe, and "En anglais"



                  French tractor protests are the latest rebellion of EU 
farmers against unfair competition and red tape – will their strategy pay 
off?
                  Sandrine Benoist, IAE Orléans

                  Why are French farmers blocking the roads? An academic who 
has been studying discontent within the farming world since 2019 provides 
some clues.


                  Silent fields: a cocktail of pesticides is stunting 
bumblebee colonies across Europe, study shows
                  Charlie C. Nicholson, Lund University; Jessica Knapp, 
Trinity College Dublin; Maj Rundlöf, Lund University

                  Studies have struggled to capture how pesticides affect 
bees outside of a lab.


                  European immigrants introduced farming to prehistoric 
North Africa, new research shows
                  Rafael M Martínez Sánchez, Universidad de Córdoba

                  New research shows that Neolithic migrants from Spain 
brought agriculture to Northern Morocco over 7,500 years ago.


                  What inner speech is, and why philosophy is waking up to 
it
                  Daniel Gregory, Universitat de Barcelona

                  We are constantly talking to ourselves, but our internal 
monologues have received surprisingly little attention from philosophers, 
until now.


                  Animals see the world in different colours than humans – 
new camera reveals what this looks like
                  Vera Vasas, University of Sussex; Daniel Hanley, George 
Mason University

                  Humans can’t see ultraviolet light – but lots of other 
animals can.


                  Early humans reached northwest Europe 45,000 years ago, 
new research shows
                  Geoffrey Smith, University of Kent; Dorothea 
Mylopotamitaki, Collège de France; Karen Ruebens, Collège de France; Marcel 
Weiss, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

                  New discoveries of bone fragments at Ranis cave in Germany 
prove the early presence of cold-adapted Homo sapiens in northern Europe


                  Women are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s – but our 
research suggests a specific brain enzyme could help protect them
                  Silvia Maioli, Karolinska Institutet

                  Two thirds of people with Alzheimer’s disease are women – 
but activation of a brain protein called CYP46A1 might hold the key to 
prevention.


                  How climate activists finally seized the issue of 
adaptation in 2023
                  Joost de Moor, Sciences Po

                  Protests against massive water reservoirs and new skiing 
infrastructure are some of the events in 2023 that have thrust climate 
adaptation politics into the limelight. Here’s why it matters.






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            From: Natalie at The Conversation
            Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2024 3:02 PM
            Subject: The end of European agriculture?



 
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