Europe's common agricultural policy is broken – let's fix it!
I am a great fan of BirdLife’s work on the CAP, but in their joint position paper with the European Landowners’ Organization (ELO), presented on 27 January 2010, BirdLife has taken a step in the wrong direction. What’s more, it has announced that this is only the beginning of their cooperation with the ELO.
It is now over a week since the confirmation hearing of Commissioner-designate for Agriculture and Rural Development Dacian Ciolos before the European Parliament, but it was only this weekend that I had the opportunity to listen to the EP’s video of the hearing itself. Commentary elsewhere on Mr Ciolos’ performance has been rather negative (my colleague Jack Thurston described it as a lack-lustre performance both in style and substance) and I would not disagree with this assessment – his responses on co-financing and on the legitimacy of equal per hectare payments across all EU Member States were just two examples of woolly and obfuscatory replies.
But I think we may need to take into account the context of this confirmation hearing, which was solely before members of the EP’s Committee on Agriculture. Thus, Mr Ciolos was faced with a totally one-sided perspective on agricultural policy by agrarian representatives. Committee members sought his views on the reintroduction of price supports, higher barriers against third country imports and more support for their special interest groups.… Read the rest
When the Lisbon Treaty came into force on 1 December 2009, one of the big winners was the European Parliament which gained equal status with the Council of Ministers in most EU decision-making, including for the first time agricultural policy-making (although with some ambiguity about its role in setting prices and aid levels to which Wyn Grant has drawn attention). There is considerable interest in whether these new powers will be used to promote or block CAP reform. The pessimistic view is that the EP will become the focus of intense sectoral lobbying which will be used to block reform.
Some light may be thrown on the way the EP will exercise its new legislative role by looking at trade policy, another area where the Parliament gained new powers under the Lisbon Treaty. Currently, the EU-South Korean Free Trade Agreement, which was negotiated under the old Nice Treaty rules, is up for ratification under the new Lisbon rules.… Read the rest
The president of the main farmers’ union, the Fedération Nationale des Syndicats d’Exploitants Agricoles (FNSEA) Jean Michel Le Metayer called for “a pause in agri-environmental measures” and the suspension of new measures. For French speaking readers, the (short) video is here.
The Ministry of agriculture seems sympathetic with this position, even though Nicolas Sarkozy has recently positioned himself as greener than his predecessors, with initiatives under a framework law called the “Grenelle of the environment” and a carbon tax (it turns out that farmers should be exempted from paying this tax, eventually). The French minister Bruno Le Maire apparently said a few days after that, indeed, a revision of the agri-environmental measures (AEM) was necessary and that it should start with an inventory of the provisions adopted throughout the Union according to the newspaper Le Figaro. On January 13 Le Maire unveiled a proposal for a new agricultural law to be discussed by the Parliament with little apparent concern for the protection of the environment.… Read the rest
Roger Waite, editor of Agra Facts and frequent podcast guest on this blog, has accepted the job of spokesperson for Agriculture Commissioner-designate Dacian Ciolos. It’s sometimes said that you can count the number of people who truly understand the Common Agricultural Policy on the fingers of one hand. Roger is certainly among that select few. He’s been reporting on agriculture policy in Brussels for the past 17 years and certainly knows his way around. He speaks fluent French (and German?) and has been said to possess a ‘silver tongue’. He steps into the larger-than-average shoes of Michael Mann, another poacher-turned-gamekeeper who gave up his job as the Financial Times Brussels correspondent to speak for Ciolos’s predecessor Mariann Fischer Boel.
Unlike some longstanding members of the Brussels press pack, Roger could never be accused of being a ‘cynical old hack’. As well as being knowledgable about the CAP, he’s excellent company, good humoured and approachable.… Read the rest
A Farm For the Future is a documentary that aired on the BBC last year. It explains just how oil-dependent our agriculture is: every calorie of food produced in the western world requires ten calories of fossil fuel energy. The film looks at the challenge of dwindling oil supplies and tries to find out what kind of farming – and food – might we be expected to see in a post-peak oil world. The answer? Permaculture and more nuts.
The film is available on Youtube in five parts.
Agriculture Commissioner designate Dacian Ciolos will appear in a confirmation hearing at the European Parliament in Brussels this Friday. Here is a list of 25 questions that MEPs should put the man who – subject to their approval – will set the agenda for European food and farming policy over the next five years.
The hearing will be webcast live, between 9am and noon, Brussels time.
The basics
1. Should maximising food production in Europe be a central objective of the CAP?
2. How would you respond to those who say it is hard to make the case for the CAP as a policy to support farm incomes when there are six and seven figure subsidies being paid every year to the likes of the Queen of England and Prince Albert of Monaco?
3. What is your opinion on the variation in rates of direct payments between new member states and the EU-15?… Read the rest
The budget monitoring website FollowTheMoney.eu is serialising a three part survey of the long history of fraud in the Common Agricultural Policy. Things are better than they once were but to invert the old Yorkshire saying, where there’s brass, there’s muck.
This group blog on European food and farming policy began in 2008 during the ‘health check’ or policy review of the CAP and could be found at the URL caphealthcheck.eu. The ‘health check’ is now well in the past and it’s time to rename this blog to keep up with the times and to introduce a new design. We hope you like it. The entire archive has been transferred to the new domain at capreform.eu and hopefully all the subscriptions (email and RSS) should continue to work. If there are any problems, use the contact form to get in touch.
Britain’s National Farmers’ Union is noted for its strategic, long-term view of agricultural issues. Its officials have a sophsiticated, well informed view of developments and it was therefore interesting to read an interview in the latest edition of Farmers Weekly with the NFU’s head of economics and international affairs, Tom Hind. He was at one time acting head of the NFU’s office in Brussels.
Not surprisingly, he takes the NFU line that farmers need to continue to receive the single farm payment (SFP) to give them a degree of income stability, especially faced with volatile markets. A basic tenet of agricultural economics is that markets for farm commodities are relatively unstable: to put it at its simplest, even with modern agronomy, the weather remains a factor which can disrupt such markets. If one accepts the view that farmers as a category require market stabilisation measures (which is not quite the same thing as income stabilisation), there is still room for a debate about whether the SFP is a particularly efficient or fair policy instrument, but it could be argued that we have to work with what we have.… Read the rest