Comments on: ELO and BirdLife fire the starting gun

By: Jack Thurston

Jack Thurston — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 15:13:15 +0000

It’s illuminating to examine the comment of NFU Wales President Ed Bailey:

“As a beef and sheep farmer in Snowdonia, I fully appreciate the ELO/Birdlife point that the delivery of public goods by farmers in less favoured areas is not sufficiently rewarded by the market. But I am worried that, taken to their logical conclusion, their arguments imply that the economic case of hill farmers should be based primarily on our environmental performance.”

“I cannot accept that and I am not in the least attracted by a CAP that defines us entirely in terms of the public goods we deliver though agri-environmental schemes. We are food producers first and foremost and we aspire to make a return from the market on that basis. That is likely to remain a struggle; in the meantime, we need a strong CAP which has agriculture at its centre.”

During the Q&A at the ELO/Birdlife launch, Allan Buckwell was asked if he considered food to be a public good. As one would expect of someone with a knowledge of economics he said No, food is a private good. I agree completely.

There is certainly a public interest in seeing that people are able to feed themselves (best done through the tax and benefit system not farm subsidies) and that markets are working efficiently and sustainably to connect producers with consumers.

In their role as ‘food producers first and foremost’ farmers should not have a claim on taxpayer support. Much though it might pain Ed Bailey, I am afraid that the case for supporting hill farmers is based primarily on environmental performance: it is only when farmers are producing something that is socially valuable but not marketable (i.e. not food, which is 100% marketable) that they have a justifiable claim on public support.

By: Valentin Zahrnt

Valentin Zahrnt — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 11:49:05 +0000

I agree with Christophe Bureau that this is a good sign. It shows that the camp of traditional CAP defenders is disintegrating and that some organizations are ‘facing up to reality’. That will put pressure on those who remain behind. But I still think that the more ambitious reformers should not make too many steps too quickly in the direction of these more-compromising farm/land/rural interests. After all, they did not move because environmentalists convinced them that we have to better protect public goods but because of political pressures. The best approach is thus to maintain this pressure.

By: Christophe Bureau

Christophe Bureau — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 08:40:34 +0000

Jack, you are right. This is even some kind of a breakthrough at least seen from France. I am not very familiar with ELO as a structure, but the French “translation” of ELO (or at least what seems to be the closest thing) is the Société des Agriculteurs de France (the SAF is an ELO member). My analysis is that among the French organizations, the SAF now stands out as being the only “mainstream” farmers’ organization that has a vision of the long term issues (it is not a union, though, has limited membership and tends to become more and more a think tank). The SAF still suffers from an image of rather large, well-off farms with some skeletons in the closet on environmental issues (pig farms in Brittany in particular) but they have seen the big changes coming years ago. They now have positioned themselves as the progressive, enlighted farmers. The SAF has put together a coherent set of proposals for a reformed CAP (something unique here, most of the French unions’ motto is simply that “we need high prices to cover production costs”, period). Quite market oriented but they do stand out in the sense that unlike all the mainstream unions, they see public goods as the future for payments (they don’t see the point of capping such payments for small family farms which is, I believe, a big difference with the left wing French farmers’ organizations which are also, and perhaps more environmentally conscious).

What is new in this story is that it differs from the traditional alliances. The French environmental organizations (including French sections of WWF and Greenpeace) have historically “gone to bed” (to use Valentin Zahrnt’ wording) with the Via Campesina type of organizations. As a result they have de facto adopted the “peasant left” proposals as far as CAP economics is concerned. I have sympathy for this cause, but let us face it, their economic program is a bit patchy and has little chance to be a big hit at the European level. This could be a bit of a drag for the political influence of environmental NGOs in the CAP reform debate.

I don’t know the inside of the BirdLife/ELO thing and I might be wrong (the FNSEA, particularly environmentally unfriendly is also an ELO member according to their website). But I can’t help thinking that it is an excellent thing that, eventually, progressive farmers organizations look for a common ground with (competent) environmental organizations such as BirdLife. Especially when the NFU becomes more and more “French”. It is a new wind for change coming from another direction.