Filed under: News, future of the CAP | Tags: Belgian farmers, CAP reform, Mariann Fisher Boel
On one hand, Mariann Fisher Boel
the initiative designed to make sure that the CAP is fit for the challenges and opportunities of today and tomorrow. read more
On the other hand, belgian farmers
“La commissaire persiste et signe dans une voie ultra-libérale”, commente le directeur de la Fédération wallonne de l’agriculture, Yvan Hayez. Et d’ajouter que Mariann Fischer Boel utilise de façon fallacieuse la crise alimentaire actuelle et la flambée des prix pour justifier des projets élaborés de longue date. (from the Belgian newspaper, La Libre Belgique) read more
According to the Walloon federation of agriculture, Mariann Fisher Boel uses food crisees and endless growth of food price to make the CAP more liberal!
Filed under: News, future of the CAP | Tags: CAP health check, European Commission, Mariann Fisher Boel, Reform
clip made by the EU which came with the Commission’s proposals. It is not to do propaganda but I think it’s quite well made!
The catchword of the CAP health check is LIBERALISM; less interventionism, more farmers’ initiatives. It concretely means (according to the EU):
abolishing set-aside rules requiring arable farmers to leave 10% of land fallow phasing out milk quotas by one percent per year from 2009-13 simplifying the link between subsidies and environmental, animal welfare and food quality standards more flexible support for sectors with special problems moving some direct aid into rural development, to support renewable energy, water management and biodiversity and measures to address climate change ending market intervention in certain areas so farmers can respond more quickly to market trends
So for the UK, the proposals seem to be not too bad, except from cutting down hand-outs (about 100,000€/year at the moment) for large farms (most of the farms in the UK are large-scale as the Queen knows!!).
But for French farmers it could be a “disaster” for their wallet as direct aids would not depend only on production anymore and part of the budget for direct aids would move to funds for rural development ! It’ll be very interesting to follow the reform under the French presidency, from july to december,…we know already that French farmers will be backed by Barnier (see previous post)!!!!
Filed under: News, future of the CAP | Tags: CAP, franz fischler, future agriculture
Nowadays, climate change always hits the headlines and worries more and more people. But since a short period of time, another issue has grabbed them… FOOD CRISIS! As food prices are increasing incessantly, every single people is concerned by this worrying issue.
According to Franz Fishler, the former European commissionner of agriculture, these two issues could be faced together but on one condition, MAINTAIN THE CAP!! Here below read some extracts of the speech he made at a forum on the fututre of agriculture a few weeks ago. (to read the whole speech, click here)
This is the biggest food crisis since World War II. Food security is at risk of becoming the next serious market failure after climate change, which Nicholas Stern has described as “the biggest market failure in history”.
Without sustainable food security, and energy, water and environmental security, the relevant looming shortages will cause much human suffering and civil strife. Similarly, without more decisive action regarding rural development, rural areas risk to be given back to nature instead of being preserved and developed for people.
The market needs coordinated direction as to what kind of policies regarding energy, water, transportation, environment and indeed agricultural and rural development are the most appropriate ones to tackle the world’s overall socio-economic and political security requirements, including those of the developing countries.
There is no lack of critics about the level of CAP expenditure, which accounts for 1% of total public expenditure in the EU. But, farmers must wonder how they can be expected to contribute to satisfy world food demand, save energy and water, and preserve the environment, all at the same time, when farm payments and public support are on the down path.
Weakening, let alone scrapping the CAP, as a growing number of people advocate, would involve a number of risks, and actually mean throwing out the baby with the bath water. The risks include: production intensification with increased pollution, land abandonment with rural desertification and reduced farm output, accelerated urbanization with additional infrastructural and environmental costs, potential difficulties for the internal market, higher world food prices with serious humanitarian, economic and political consequences, in particular for the poor at home and for the net- food-importing developing countries.
However, the status quo is not an option. All countries in the world are called upon to restructure their agricultural policies, so as to produce enough food, improve their environment and open their markets. This notably holds for most food-importing developing countries whose policies favour urbanized people as against farmers. But it obviously holds for the CAP as well.
The CAP reform process is not quite over yet, far from that. Higher food prices do not suggest slashing the CAP budget, but using it in new ways so as to preserve and enhance EU capacity to produce food and a good environment in a sustainable way. Substantial investments will be needed to help respect cross-compliance rules and make farming more sustainable dealing with the negative externalities of production such as water pollution, promoting organic farming, adopting new, expensive technologies at an early stage, and rewarding farmers for the actual delivery of public goods, including the preservation of extensive farming. A real shift in CAP support towards rural development is of the essence. The
CAP must substantially increase its assistance to the multifunctional tasks of European agriculture so as to provide the services to society that the market does not pay for.
Slashing CAP support as from 2014 would thus mean European Council’s failure to appreciate that overexploitation of natural resources together with urbanization and globalization make it more, rather than less important to provide the budgetary means to tackle the challenges that we address here to-day. Besides, budget cuts would be counterproductive, because they would drive farmers to increase unsustainable production intensity, penalizing biodiversity, ecosystems, soils and water resources.
