Roger Waite, editor of Agra Facts, gives his account of this week’s Agriculture Council meeting in Luxembourg. The main issues are the unfolding end game of the WTO Doha Round, and what it means for European agriculture, the global food price rises and the impacts on the world’s poor and the Commission’s latest thinking on its forthcoming legislative proposal for the CAP health check. … Read the rest
World Bank weighs in to ‘food versus fuel’ debate
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. … Read the rest
World Bank weighs in to 'food versus fuel' debate
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. … Read the rest
Irish farmers flex muscles in Lisbon Treaty referendum
The WTO negotiations have become a live issue in Irish politics because Ireland is the only EU country which will hold a referendum to ratify the Lisbon Treaty, and the campaign provides an opportunity for interest groups to maximise their bargaining strength. For example, farm groups who are traditionally pro-EU in referendum votes have threatened to campaign against the Lisbon Treaty not because of the content of the Treaty but because of their dissatisfaction with the way they see Peter Mandelson as EU Trade Commissioner handling the WTO negotiations.
Padraig Walshe, President of the Irish Farmers’ Association, the largest of the Irish farm groups, gave a not-so-veiled warning recently when he noted that “it would be unrealistic to expect the farming community and rural people to vote for the Lisbon Treaty while Mandelson is planning the destruction of the Irish and European family farm structure.”… Read the rest
US Farm Bill goes to the wire
The US Congress has just 14 days in which to agree on a new farm bill able to secure the approval of the White House, and time is running out. If a farm bill is not passed by March 15th, then the so-called ‘permanent legislation’, the provisions of the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 and the Agricultural Act of 1949, would again become legally effective. The implications of this happening have recently been analysed by the US Department of Agriculture and would have such a dramatic and perverse effect on US farm programmes that it is most unlikely that Congress would let it happen.… Read the rest
Podcast: February Agriculture Council round-up with Roger Waite
Roger Waite is a long-standing member of the Brussels agricultural press pack and he will be giving a podcast round-up of the monthly Agriculture Council meetings, when farm ministers from all 27 EU member states met to decide the future of EU agriculture and rural development policy. In this month’s meeting, EU farm ministers debated the Commission’s ideas for the health check, the latest position of the WTO Doha Round negotiations and the impact of rising feed prices on European pig farmers.
As well as being the founding editor of the AgraFacts news subscription service, Roger is a Journalism Fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.… Read the rest
Agriculture Council fun: rename the CAP
Agra-Facts is one of the best CAP news sources, although it does come with a fairly hefty price tag that probably puts it out of reach of anyone who is not professionally involved in European agriculture policy. Roger Waite, Agra Facts editor, tells me that he would like to open the Agra Facts competition to ‘rename the CAP’ to readers of this blog. Here are the details, and be sure to scroll down the page for our exclusive interactive name generator tool.… Read the rest
New studies show biofuels increase carbon emissions
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.… Read the rest
Dutch farmers get most subsidy per hectare
One proposal in the Commission’s health check communication of 20 November 2007 is that the member states which still allocate farm subsidies on the basis of historic entitlements should move to the area average system in which allocations are the same across all hectares in a given geographical region. But it looks as though this change will be optional, according to a speech made by Commissioner Fischer Boel in Ireland on 29 January. Moreover, the flat rate system does nothing to address the striking inequalities between member states, which shows that on average, Dutch farmers get €1299 per hectare, while Portuguese farmers get just €88.… Read the rest
Commission drops plan to reduce 'fat cat' farm subsidies
Top Commission officials have confirmed that in the face of opposition from four member states (Czech Republic, Germany, Slovakia and the UK) as well as many farm unions, Mariann Fischer Boel has dropped plans to cut the very largest farm subsidy payments by 45 per cent. The plan, which would have affected an estimated 23,000 farms that receive in excess of €300,000 a year, a list which is dominated by Europe’s wealthiest landowners such as the Duke of Westminster, Prince Albert of Monaco and the Crown Prince of Liechtenstein. … Read the rest