Month: February 2012

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Formulating interests of NMS in the CAP post-2013

Representatives of nine Central European Chambers of Agriculture gathered in Budapest in 28-29 November 2011 to have a discussion on the latest proposals of the European Commission on the future of the CAP. By the end of the meeting, a Joint Declaration has been signed, expressing the interests of the New Member States (NMS) in the future of the CAP.

The Declaration starts with the strong statement that the accession had an overall negative impact on NMS agriculture as its size and power has lost ground. Therefore the declaration clearly states that NMS have expected fundamental changes in the design of the CAP post-2013 and are highly disappointed with the recent proposals of the Commission. As clearly stated,

“The Commission’s proposal in its present form fails to envisage a stronger and more competitive European agriculture – instead it puts additional costs and various other administrative burdens on farmers. It does not come up with a genuinely simplified and transparent new regulation – instead it complicates the present system even further.

… Read the rest
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The green menu system: an idea worth considering

The recently published analysis of Groupe de Bruges (GDB) starts with demonstrating the challenges agriculture faces in the 21st century and points out that one of the biggest challenges will be to increase the production of sufficient, nutritious and high quality food for a growing world population while massively improving land use and management performance. In this context, the analysis criticises Commission proposals as they lack many important issues such as urgency, systems approach and integrated perspectives.

As to the lack of urgency, the analysis states that the Commission does not seem to realise that the European Union is in its biggest crisis ever and therefore does not provide any plans for acute natural/food security crisis. This argument is underpinned by that fact that there is neither prioritisation of objectives nor hierarchy of goals in the proposals. As to the lack of systems approach, it is well identified by GDB that income support in the current policy setting will not improve competitiveness of farmers as other factors like markets, services, information, capital and infrastructure as well as the position of farmers in the food supply chain seem to play a much more important role in this regard.… Read the rest