Author: Alan Matthews

Alan Matthews is Professor Emeritus of European Agricultural Policy in the Department of Economics at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. His major research interests are agricultural policy analysis, the impact of international trade on developing countries, and computable general equilibrium analysis of trade and agricultural policy reforms. He has worked as a consultant to the European Parliament, the OECD, the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations and the UN Industrial Development Organisation, and has been a panel member in a number of WTO Dispute Settlement procedures. He is a former President of the European Association of Agricultural Economists but writes here in a personal capacity.
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Questions from Irish pigmeat contamination crisis

Europe’s lastest food safety incident stems from the confirmation of elevated levels of dioxins in Irish pigmeat last Saturday. As a result, all Irish pork and bacon products from pigs slaughtered in Ireland since 1st September 2008 have been recalled. Consumers have been advised, as a precautionary measure, not to consume Irish pork and bacon products at this time and to dispose of any purchased since the 1st of September 2008. The discovery of this contamination – which has been sourced back to a small feed mill recycling bakery and confectionery waste for animal feed – is a calamity for the Irish pig sector and could yet have major adverse consequences for the Irish food processing sector as a whole. There is a good account of the background to the incident on Wikipedia. I have given my own initial reaction to the events in an Irish Independent article today. Here I want to explore three questions which the crisis has thrown up.… Read the rest

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Implications of reforming the basis for SPS payments

A recent paper by Beatriz Velaquez from the European Commission throws light on the consequences of moving towards a flat-rate scheme for SPS payments. Drawing on the Impact Analysis for the CAP Health Check proposals and using the FADN database of farm accounts, she examines three options (a) a flat rate scheme with equal payments per hectare across Member States; (b) a flat rate scheme with equal payments per hectare within Member States; and (c) a flat rate scheme with equal payments per entitlement. Her provocative conclusion is that an EU-wide flat rate would do nothing to improve the distributional equity of the SPS payment scheme. This is important given that the only half-concrete commitment in the Presidency conclusions following the recent Agricultural Council meeting was to address the differing level of direct payments between Member States.… Read the rest

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Useful primer on CAP reform

I only recently came across a paper by Franklin Dehousse and Peter Timmerman published by the Egmont Institute, the Royal Institute for International Relations in Belgium entitled The New Context of the Agricultural Debate in Europe. Although published in June of this year, and thus written prior to the recent political conclusion to the CAP Health Check, it provides an excellent summary of CAP developments since the 2003 Mid-Term Review. The paper is not an evaluation of the reforms (Dehousse is a lawyer and Judge at the Court of first instance of the European Communities) but a well-referenced account of the road the CAP has travelled in the past five years. Recommended.… Read the rest

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World food prices and the CAP

Jorge Nùñez Ferrer of the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels has an interesting comment on the possible implications of current high food prices for future CAP reform in the debate on the post-2013 EU budget, in which he rather despairingly projects that “the French Presidency will seek to strike a deal in the name of world food security to maintain (if not increase) the present budgetary allocation for the CAP for the next Financial Perspectives, similar to the agreement struck between Chirac and Schroeder in 2002.” Certainly, the way the CAP should be reshaped in an era of higher world food prices is a new element in the debate on CAP reform which it is obviously hugely important to address. But Nùñez Ferrer is right to raise a question mark over some of the proposed ‘solutions’ which have gained currency in recent months.… Read the rest

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Do-ha, So-wha'?

The internet silence following the collapse of the Doha Round on 30 July last has been striking. It appears not only the negotiators but also the commentators feel the need for a well-earned August break. In a piece for last Sunday’s Irish Sunday Business Post, I tried to summarise my own views on why the Round collapsed.… Read the rest

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Do-ha, So-wha’?

The internet silence following the collapse of the Doha Round on 30 July last has been striking. It appears not only the negotiators but also the commentators feel the need for a well-earned August break. In a piece for last Sunday’s Irish Sunday Business Post, I tried to summarise my own views on why the Round collapsed.… Read the rest

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The CAP’s ambiguous face to the outside world

The description of a Fortress Europe has often been applied to the CAP. But just as the CAP has undergone significant internal reform since the first faltering steps under Commissioner MacSharry in 1992, there have also been substantial changes to the CAP’s external trade regime. The EU still maintains high tariffs on specific agricultural imports, but in fact the majority of the EU’s agricultural imports (including here fish as well as highly processed products like beverages and tobacco products) enter the EU duty-free, either because the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) tariff is zero, or because the EU has granted duty-free preferential access.… Read the rest

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The CAP's ambiguous face to the outside world

The description of a Fortress Europe has often been applied to the CAP. But just as the CAP has undergone significant internal reform since the first faltering steps under Commissioner MacSharry in 1992, there have also been substantial changes to the CAP’s external trade regime. The EU still maintains high tariffs on specific agricultural imports, but in fact the majority of the EU’s agricultural imports (including here fish as well as highly processed products like beverages and tobacco products) enter the EU duty-free, either because the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) tariff is zero, or because the EU has granted duty-free preferential access.


Breakdown by import regime
Eurostat now classifies EU external trade by the nature of the import regime (MFN or preferential) under which a particular product is imported. The table below shows the data for agricultural imports (defined as products in the HS tariff classification chapters 1 through 24) for the latest year 2007.… Read the rest

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EU wrong to get involved in provision of free fruit and vegetables

Yesterday, the Agriculture and Rural Development Commissioner announced an EU-wide scheme to provide free fruit and vegetables to school children between the ages of 6 and 10. The purpose of the scheme is to encourage more healthy eating habits among children as a contribution to the campaign to fight the obesity epidemic which is storing up very large health costs for European countries in the future.

While the objectives of the scheme are entirely laudable and should be supported, I strongly question what business the EU has getting involved in promoting a School Fruit Scheme (although the scheme also covers vegetables, it seems to be referred to as a fruit scheme – vegetables were always the poor relation!). It simply does not pass the subsidiarity test without stretching the parameters of that test to meaningless levels.

One of the rationales for the scheme is that it would help to bring the EU closer to its citizens.… Read the rest

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New Humboldt University report on global market trends

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. … Read the rest