Years of growing conflict between farm and environment policies reached a sudden and unexpected crossroads last September, thanks to an unusual political experiment. The EU Strategic Dialogue shook up long deadlocked political discussions to produce what nobody thought was possible: broad consensus. If the EU powers that created the process now implement its recommendations, a majority of farmers, rural economies and ecosystems could soon see major and rapid gains. A major came today, when the European Commission outlined a package of reforms. Read the press release here.
We worked for weeks to try secure news background stories ahead of the Commission’s so-called vision for agriculture and food. Despite being a potentially significant breakthrough and worthy of deeper coverage, as always, generating feature stories results in relatively little coverage compared to a genuine news story, like a policy plan, investigation or other ‘intervention’ that breaks new ground. A few curtain-raiser stories appeared in Le Vif and Renewable Matter, but the bulk of our 150 media mentions came from pushing a reactive line to the Commission’s move.
