Not even a pandemic should endanger the Germans’ asparagus consumption. Even if Romanian seasonal workers bear the health costs for it – or die.

Food production and changes in the environment are in a complex relationship of mutual influence. On the one hand, the increment in food production, as a result of the increasing growth of the worldʹs population, has repercussions on the environment. On the other hand, ecological changes have negative effects on agricultural production and the nutrition of a significant part of the worldʹs population, posing a major threat to food and nutrition security on a global‐scale. That is why, new topics and approaches such as food sovereignty and the sustainability of food production have lately emerged in the media coverage of the vast issue of nutrition. This paper presents the results of an analysis regarding the ways in which the environmental issues and the sustainability of food production are addressed in the German media. More precisely, the analysis focused on the online press articles dealing with human nutrition. The paper discusses the extent and ways in which links and correlations are made in the German media between food and environmental issues, the extent to which the journalists approach topics such as: sustainable food production, food sovereignty, organic and local agriculture, local animal husbandry, as well as the extent to which the German press makes connections between unhealthy nutrition and unsustainable food production, or debates on various diets, controversies and social trends related to human nutrition, and subsequent discussions about the food of the future. The methodology of the study presented in this paper includes a thematic qualitative and quantitative content analysis of the German online articles on nutrition published during 2014 and 2016 as well as a secondary analysis of this broader research, which aimed at the specific, focused objective of conducting a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the way in which media covered aspects regarding the sustainability of food production. Keywords: food, nutrition, sustainability of food production, food sovereignty, media coverage, Germany.

http://www.ras.org.in/the_human_cost_of_fresh_food#A-title1 Fresh food supply chains in Europe’s transnational agribusinesses depend on cheap, non-unionised, and privately managed labour from low-wage eastern European countries. The costs versus benefits of this phenomenon are under-studied. By examining seasonal farm migration from Romania to Germany, we argue that the Covid-19 pandemic is, for farmworkers, a Janus-faced event. On the one hand, it has worsened the precarity of migrant farmworkers. Changes in the German state’s pay legislation that excluded workers from social benefits, and the reluctance of the German state to enforce labour legislation to the full in the early stages of the pandemic sharpened what we have termed the structural disempowerment of migrant farmworkers. Romanian seasonal workers have had little choice but to implicitly subsidise the costs of German farm products. At the same time, the health crisis has made their work visible and led to processes that challenge the perception of migrant workers as passive agents. In this regard we refer specifically to (i) the supportive media coverage in Romania, Germany, and beyond and (ii) the assertion of union-affiliated farm and abattoir labour activism in Germany. These planted seeds of contestation, and collective action against abuses sprang up in several farms. Combined with a flare-up of Covid-19 in German abattoirs in the summer of 2020, these campaigns for visibility and improved working conditions led the German government to alter legislation so as to better protect seasonal labour in the fresh vegetable and meat sectors. Going forward, the tension between these two opposing sociopolitical drivers may shape the governance of seasonal labour in Europe. Keywords: Romania, Germany, migrant agricultural workers, seasonal agricultural work, food supply chains, Covid-19, labour unions

This report is part of the HERANET funded project FOOD2GATHER. The project aims at understanding the question of integration/exclusion of migrants through foodscapes. An important step in this direction is to analyse the contextual framework within which food-related practices, norms and values are embedded in European societies. Food controversies that have raised and have been reported in the media since the “2015 migrants’ crisis” across Europe can reveal important aspects related to such norms and values and indicate possible tensions and compromises. This report presents and discusses relevant food controversies that occurred in the six countries participating in the study (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, and the Netherlands). This will generate a contextual overview of the integration/exclusion of migrants through foodscapes. Controversy has been used as a tool and a scanner. Each of the six FOOD2GATHER teams provided two relevant controversies that have reached media attention in the last ten years. One of the two had to be related to halal food. The analysis of the controversies has been conducted by identifying issues they tackled, agents they involved, (public) spaces and situations in which controversies took place and what they produced. A comparative analysis of relevant variables related to migrations, such as the geopolitical position of the countries, organization of reception and food provision, has been conducted as well. The six countries included in the study have different traditions related to migration and have been exposed to the “migrants’ crisis” in different ways. These differences are reflected in the proposed controversies. However, some common traits tend to emerge and reveal power relationships within societies that are different or shared by the countries involved in the project. We show that these power relationships particularly deal with the right to food, citizens’ commitment, identity, the place of religion, animal welfare and political issues. Our study indicates that analysing controversies adds an important dimension to the study of foodscapes. Food controversies that reach the media attention are seldom something migrants have brought up themselves. The migrants’ representation in the media based on food controversies indicated that migrants are given little opportunity to negotiating values and practices, as norms about “the right” quantity and quality of food tend to reproduce the food model of the country they migrate to, also when there is a “positive” focus on ethnic business. To better understand these dynamics, we propose the concept of “food encounters” and illustrate how the type of food encounters can play a role in how foodscapes could evolve or even emerge.

The COVID-19 pandemic placed great stress on food supply chains, following the policies adopted to contain the spread of the virus. The labour shortages in agriculture emerged early in Spain and Italy during the first months of the pandemic revealed the essential role of migrant farmworkers in ensuring food security. The purpose of this article is twofold: firstly, to examine whether the coronavirus pandemic contributed to change the public and political attitudes towards farm work and migration; secondly, to assess which type of epistemological perspective prevailed in these countries when debating on seasonal migration and industrial agriculture. The article uses a mix of research methods based on the Critical Discourse Approach, which includes a systematic review of media sources, the examination of relevant legal and administrative acts, the analysis of secondary statistical data, and, finally, the analysis of auto-representations and proposals put forward by migrant farmworkers and trade unions through their blogs, websites, and Facebook accounts. The major trends found as a result of this analysis indicate that even though the pandemic contributed to shed light in both countries on the pivotal role of migrant farmworkers and the forms of labour exploitation they suffer in the agricultural sector, this increased visibility did not shift into real policy and attitudes changes. At the heart of this problem is the fictitious separation between labour and capital, whereby migrant agricultural labour remains on the sidelines of the major discussions centered around the capital that are undergoing in European advanced economies.

Building on exhaustive Open Society European Policy Institute and European University Institute publications on migrant labour in the agri-food system in Southern and Northern Europe, this short brief focuses on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on agri-food systems and migrant labour in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden. As all the country sections in this brief highlight, the Covid-19 crisis has further exposed the limits of long supply chains, including in terms of price distortions, unfair competition and distribution dynamics. The pandemic has also further exacerbated the conditions of precariousness and vulnerability of many workers employed in the agri-food system, especially migrant workers. This study shows that while national governments have adopted several measures to facilitate the mobility and recruitment of seasonal migrant workers, temporary and selective short-term regularisation measures cannot be the only response, above all to combat the exploitation of migrant workers. A profound revision of migration policies to develop safe and legal entry routes for low- and medium-skilled workers is needed. It is also necessary to adopt structural interventions to strengthen wages and labour rights, ensure decent living conditions, develop adequate welfare services and tackle subcontracting. This brief points out that the pandemic may constitute a crucial opportunity for a new EU drive to forge more environmentally sustainable and rights compliant agri-food systems.

Food production and changes in the environment are in a complex relationship of mutual influence. On the one hand, the increment in food production, as a result of the increasing growth of the world's population, has repercussions on the environment, and on the other hand ecological changes have negative effects on agricultural production and the nutrition of a significant part of the world's population, posing a major threat to food and nutrition security on a global-scale. That is why, lately, in the media coverage of the vast issue of nutrition, new topics, approaches and associations have emerged, such as food sovereignty and the sustainability of food production, but also the relationship and interaction between the world's growing population and the environment in a continuous degradation, or the threats that hover over people, but also over the Earth, the living space and the home that shelters humanity. This paper presents the results of an analysis regarding the ways in which the environmental issues and the sustainability of food production are addressed in the German media. More precisely, the press articles dealing with human nutrition were taken into consideration in the in analysis. The paper discusses the extent and ways in which links and correlations are made in the German media between food and environmental issues, to what extent do journalists approach topics such as sustainable food production, food sovereignty, organic and local agriculture, local animal husbandry, as well as the extent to which the German press makes connections between unhealthy nutrition and unsustainable food production, or analyzes and debates on various diets, controversies and social trends related to human nutrition, and the food of the future. The methodology of the study presented in this paper includes thematic content analysis, both quantitative and qualitative, of articles on nutrition published in the period 2014-2016 in the German media in their online form and, in addition, the secondary analysis of this broader research, which aimed at the specific, focused objective of examining quantitatively and qualitatively the media covered aspects regarding the sustainability of food production.

The confrontations of stakeholder visions about agriculture and food production has become a focal point in the public sphere, coinciding with a diversification of agrifood models. This study analyzes the debates stemming from the coexistence of these models, particularly during the initial term of neoliberal-centrist Emmanuel Macron's presidency in France. Employing collective monitoring from 2017 to 2021, a corpus of 958 online news and blog articles was compiled. Using a computational analysis, we reveal the framings and controversies emerging from this media discourse. The macro-structuring of discourse on model coexistence revolves around scientific, economic and political framings. Coexistence is a complex of debates based on specific frames associated with specific arenas and actor configurations: growth of organic agriculture, transformations of agrifood systems, sciences of production and impacts, livestock and meat diet controversies, agroecological innovations, CAP reform criticism, discourse of peasant agriculture and State-Profession co-gestion. Employing global sentiment analysis and focusing on salient controversies, namely EGAlim law, pesticide regulations, and agribashing, we show the shift from conciliation to a hardening of debates. Finally, we discuss the causes and consequences of this trend. The political will to support the transition of agriculture remains influenced by the co-gestion system, an inherited configuration of decision-makers instrumental in the agricultural modernization. As a consequence, significant agricultural challenges, particularly highlighted in the scientific macro-frame, persist unresolved. This lock-in of the agrifood system is based on defensive strategies that challenge the democratic debate about food and agricultural practices.