The fact that Finland has staged an annual herring festival ever since 1743 tells you something about the historical and cultural significance of the country’s most populous fish.

It began with Angela Merkel. When the former German chancellor opened the borders to refugees in 2015, hundreds of thousands of Syrians and others entered. Many are now settled all over the country.

The Earth is a sick patient, struggling to survive and feed its inhabitants.

Spring is a season that turns our world green, but olives trees in the hills of Andalusia in southern Spain have never been so pale. For local farmers it is yet another difficult year.

The war in Ukraine is threatening to trigger a global world crisis and is highlighting the EU's dependence on mineral-based fertilizers , which are mainly produced by Russia.

Ana, 32, loves going to the movies, is keen on theatre and takes regular yoga lessons. However, during the Covid pandemic she quit the frenzy of Madrid to settle in a remote village in Extremadura , a large Spanish rural area, bordering Portugal.

Over the last two centuries, the  world population has increased  from one billion to 7.7 billion today. As the population keeps rising, so does food demand.

A robotic arm grabs a long metallic cylindrical container and puts it smoothly into a steaming water basin.

There are different reasons to adapt new technologies in food processing. First, the industry hopes to create new foods that will provide a better taste and new sensations in the mouth .

More than the 70 percent of the protein sources required by animals bred in the European Union are imported from non-EU countries . Soybean dominates the protein supply for animal feed .

Industrial food treatment processes need to tackle bacteria that can spoil food . These microorganisms, although non-pathogenic, can make food products unpalatable and affect how long they can be stored for.

Consumption of seafood is regarded as healthy since it contains high quality proteins, vitamins and omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids. But it might also put us at risk of exposure to environmental pollutants.

Over recent decades, research on innovative food processing technologies has been carried out to identify ways to combat pathogens while reducing the need for chemical preservatives and improving the nutritional properties of the food at the same time.

Not only a crafty deception to provide tasty food for astronauts. Over the next years 3D printers may become a household kitchen appliance, helping people save time when preparing meals or adding specific nutritious ingredients to their diet.

African swine fever , or ASF, is a viral disease that kills almost every pig it infects and is likened to Ebola . It gained a foothold in Georgia in 2007, when contaminated pig meat landed from a ship from South-East Africa and was fed to local pigs.

Pines are long-lived; between 100 and 1,000 years. And they are a tree species, of high commercial importance. Indeed, they are valued for their timber and wood pulp.

Scientists in Spain are growing bacteria that can transform organic waste into polymers inside their cells . And in Holland researchers are experimenting with algae which can also produce bioplastic components .

Low-cost sensors and wireless communication technologies have enabled moves towards smart homes and smart cars. Using similar technologies, scientists involved in an EU-funded project called ALL-SMART-PIGS are now developing technologies that turn pigs’ farms into smart farms .

Internet Surveillance is often associated with names like Facebook, Google or the NSA, but now also pig farmers have started to use new tools to monitor every aspect of a pig’s life.

Each year, the European Union produces three billion tonnes of waste. This equates to six tonnes of solid waste for every EU citizen, according to Eurostat. A major challenge is findings ways to reduce and reuse a large amount of such waste .