Although food prices are dreadfully high, the French minister for agriculture, Michel Barnier, claimed that the CAP should be a model for Africa and Latin America.
Let notice that France which receive the higest amount of subsidies for agriculture will assume the EU presidency in July!
“What we are witnessing in the world is the consequence of too much free-market liberalism. We can’t leave feeding people to the mercy of the market” said Barnier in an interview with The Financial Times, published on 28 April 2008.
But opponents to Barnier are numerous. They think that the CAP is a system for rich countries with few producers who produce a lot and export a lot! And Barnier’s point of view seems to be going against the goals of the CAP health check which tends to cut down direct aids.
Here is an opponent’s reply, Liam Halligan for the Telegraph:
This isn’t just a bad idea. It’s an idea so self-serving – and dangerous – that political leaders everywhere should publicly rip it to pieces. Barnier – and Sarkozy too – should hang their heads in shame.
But far more worrying than these demand trends is the growing shortfall in supply – and this is where the CAP is so damaging. In recent years, global food inventories have plummeted – with wheat and rice stocks now only 15 and 18 per cent of global annual demand respectively, down from 30 and 37 per cent in 2000.
This is partly due to droughts and the high cost of oil – which hits supplies hard as modern farming is so energy-intensive. And falling inventories gives the lie to the argument that food prices are being driven mainly by speculation. If that was so, stocks would be growing, not collapsing.
Looking further ahead, while demand will keep cranking up, the medium-term food supply outlook is ghastly. With many mass-produced crops already pumped up by chemicals and genetic modification, numerous academic studies suggest that yield gains, having risen during the “green revolution” of the 1970s and 80s, have now levelled off. And there is compelling evidence of an ever-more pressing global shortage of cultivated land.
That’s why the CAP makes matters so much worse. The European Union is a huge agricultural player – the world’s biggest exporter and importer of farm products. And our bloated farm subsidies have, over many years, held back the growth of agricultural capacity across the developing world – the very centres of population growth now driving up food prices.
The CAP’s import tariffs, by the way, mean EU consumers pay much higher food prices than they should. But worse than that – far worse – is the external impact of our subsidies.
EU farmers are supported to the tune of £33bn a year – with the French receiving the most. The US plays the same trick, buying the farm vote with a similar sum.
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