Is it too early to call it a depression? Difficult to tell, but all the news this month is pointing in that direction. So it is timely that over at the CAP2020 blog, Martin Farmer has written a lengthy post on the impact of the global economic slowdown on farming. In many respects, it’s a case of swings and roundabouts. Commodity prices are down, but so too are key input prices like oil. Consumers have less money to spend, but they still need to eat. Recent spikes in profits provide new money for investment, but bank loans have never been more costly. Governments have less revenue for costly handouts to farmers, but there is talk of a new wave of trade protectionism. [...]

The influential Land Use Policy Group will be launching their vision for the future of the CAP after 2013 in Brussels on March 30th. This will be an important event in the long-term effort to clarify thinking about future policy so that it delivers benefits to the environment and rural communities. [...]

I’m told that the Finnish and Swedish governments (backed by the French EU Presidency) are working right now to insert a loophole to new EU biofuels sustainability standards that would allow the destruction of the world’s peat lands, with appaling consequences for increasing global greenhouse gas emissions. Chapter and verse from BirdLife International after the jump.
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It’s December and the weekend newspaper supplements are already starting to swell with all those ‘end of the year’ reviews – on news, sport, books, films, celebrity gossip… In the same spirit my German Marshall Fund colleague Dr Tim Searchinger has written a policy brief that brings together in one place the conclusions of ten major reviews of biofuel policies that have been released by leading international insitutions, national technical agencies, and international scientific organizations since January 2008.
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Czech agriculture minister Petr Gandalovic made an curious statement at the informal Agriculture Council meeting held earlier this week in the French Alps. Mr Gandalovic, who will assume the chairmanship of the Council under the Czech EU Presidency in the first half of 2009, told his colleagues:

“The more specific you make the policy, the more room you give to bureaucrats who make the decisions. Non-targeted payments give more power to farmers.”

In case it’s not clear, Mr Gandalovic was making the case against targeted payments. In doing so, perhaps inadvertently, he touched on a question that goes to the very heart of the debate about the future of the CAP: the extent to which the CAP’s 54 billion euros of annual public expenditure should be targeted on clearly defined objectives and measurable outcomes. It is a debate raging right now within DG Agriculture, a power struggle that is pitting CAP ‘modernisers’ who seek a greater role for the current rural development pillar against CAP ‘consolidators’ who defend the “Fischler settlement” and the current Commission Health Check agenda. What it boils down to is a debate over the fundamental role of public policy in agriculture. [...]

Several bloggers have noted the amazing disappearing biofuels poll (an online poll about EU biofuels policy that suddenly vanished from the website of the European Commission President José Manuel Barroso without any explanation). Following repeated enquries to the Commission President’s press office that were completely ignored, a more formal approach under the EU access to documents law has yielded a very comprehensive reply from Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen, the Commission President’s Deputy Spokeswoman. I can now reveal the results. [...]

Three new reports published this week have called on the EU to drop or severley scale back its biofuels targets. These latest interventiosn by the European Parliament Environment Committee, a study group commissioned by UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and a leading Brussels-based think tank show that the tide has now firmly turned against the EU’s current subsidy-fueled march towards using ever more of Europe’s land to grow fuel for cars instead of food for people. [...]

Another study forecasting higher real food prices for the next decade has recently been published by three authors associated with the Humboldt University in Berlin led by Professor Harald von Witzke. The working paper provides a useful qualitative survey of the reasons why agricultural supply will have difficulty in keeping up with the demand for food and other products of agriculture (including bioenergy). For the more technically minded, it uses a partial equilibrium multi-market model (descended from the venerable SWOPSIM model once supported by the US Department of Agriculture) to provide quantitative estimates of price levels for the key grains and oilseeds which are the focus of the study.
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A couple of week’s ago Berlaymole noted the mysterious disappearance of the online poll about EU biofuels policy from the website of the European Commission President José Manuel Barroso.

The poll had asked respondents the following question:

Should the E.U. stick to its target to reach 10% biofuels by 2020?
- Yes
- No

The results of the poll have never been published and no explanation has been given as to why the poll has been removed. Fear not. We have reinstated the poll on this website, you’ll find it on the sidebar to the left.

Moreover, I’ve written to Barroso’s spokeswoman Leonor Ribeiro Da Silva under the terms of the Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 regarding public access to documents.

Under the terms of this Regulation, Ms Ribeiro Da Silva or one of her colleagues is legally obliged to acknowledge my request and to respond to my request within 15 working days. Failure to do so would constitute maladminstration on the part of the Commission.

Let’s wait and see what happens.

For the past couple of weeks José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, has been running an online poll on his website, asking visitors to express their opinions on EU’s biofuels policy. At the last count, some 89 per cent of the 60,000 respondents had voted for the EU to drop its biofuels targets, which have been widely criticised for taking food out of the mouths of the world’s hungry to put in the gas tanks of European vehicles. As of today the poll has mysteriously disappeared from President Barroso’s website, and nowhere has the result been announced. Has the President of the Commission been taking election advice from Robert Mugabe? Why not just ask him for yourself, using the handy online contact form.

We all know that the legislators who write US farm policy are not the brightest bulbs in the box. Even so, Senator Chuck Grassley treated us to an unusual insight into his own very special, mixed-up world during a telephone press briefing last week, reported in the Des Moines Register. Asked about the contribution of the US Government’s massive food-to-fuel subsidies to rising world food prices and the resulting hunger, poverty and social unrest, Grassley denied there was any connection and suggested the responsibility lay with people in China eating too much meat. [...]

Before he joined OECD, I would run into agricultural economist Stefan Tangermann from time to time at conferences. I was always impressed by his contributions so it is interesting to read his interview with Agra Focus, one of the latest in an excellent series. In a long interview, he had many interesting points to make and the publication itself is essential reading for those with a serious interest in agriculture and food policy. Below a few of his key themes are picked out. [...]

With growing consensus that US and EU biofuel subsidies are among the principal contributors to recent global food price rises, termed a ’silent tsunami’ by The Economist, EU Trade Commissioner today signaled that Europe needs to reconsider its target of achieving a 10 per cent biofuels mix in transport fuel by 2020. Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme this morning, Mandelson said:

“We’ve got to develop our biofuels policy intelligently… I think we need to carefully reflect on the approach that we’re taking.”

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World Bank President Robert Zoellick has warned that high food prices are threatening to undo seven years of progress in global poverty reduction. Zoellick has encouraged donor countries to take immediate action to increase funding to the UN World Food Programme and coordinate a ‘New Deal on World Food Policy’. The World Bank has released a new analysis which points the finger squarely at biofuels as the prime cause of the recent surge in global commodity prices. [...]

Two new studies published in Science magazine add to the mounting evidence that most biofuels are actually increasing carbon emissions, rather than reducing them. The current boom in biofuels in the EU and US is entirely driven by government policies and subsidies, which are invariably presented as a way of addressing climate change by reducing carbon emissions. [...]