Europe's common agricultural policy is broken – let's fix it!
With the release yesterday of new figures on EU expenditure in 2007, the Commission has been busy spinning the line that farm subsidies no longer account for the biggest item of Brussels spending. Most news outlets have been swallowing this line without taking a closer look at the figures which show that a full 50 billion euros of EU money was spent on farm-based programmes.
Surging prices for agricultural commodities means that the EU spends much less on the traditional ‘market measures’ of the CAP such as intervention buying when prices fall below a target price, export subsidies and private storage aid for unsold surpluses. Last year the EU decided to allocate some of this underspend to the Galileo space programme. This year, the proposal is to channel the money to farmers in developing countries who currently suffer from very low productivity.
Surging prices for agricultural commodities means that the EU spends much less on the traditional ‘market measures’ of the CAP such as intervention buying when prices fall below a target price, export subsidies and private storage aid for unsold surpluses. Last year the EU decided to allocate some of this underspend to the Galileo space programme. This year, the proposal is to channel the money to farmers in developing countries who currently suffer from very low productivity.
When UK Chancellor Alistair Darling wrote to his finance minister colleagues on ECOFIN last month he made the case for reducing agricultural trade barriers and EU farm subsidies as a way of addressing what has become known as the ‘global food crisis’. Quite rightly much of the world’s attention has been focussed on the impact of rising food prices on the world’s poor. But a more motivating factor for the UK could be the fact that higher food prices presents the UK economy with the very serious problem of imported inflation.
One of the advances made when Franz Fischler was farm commissioner was to recognise farm animals as sentient beings rather than agricultural products. This provided a basis for treating animal welfare as one of the planks of multifunctionality. However, a vet who is an animal welfare expert suggested in a talk (under Chatham House rules) that I attended that this could face a challenge under WTO rules at some point in the future.
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?… Read the rest
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?… Read the rest
Over at farmsubsidy.org you can see the first fruits of a mapping project which aims to place every EU farm subsidy payment on a fully interactive web-based map, powered by the excellent Google Maps. The first country to get the mapping treatment is Sweden, chosen because its government has been by far the most transparent in terms of farm subsidy payments. The map displays some € 7 billion in CAP expenditure in 2 million payments to 114,700 recipients since 2000. We think the map-based interface is a fascinating new platform for bringing the CAP closer to the citizens that pay for it.… Read the rest
A row over the banning of GM feed by British supermarkets raises wider issues about how far new technology can be used to solve problems of world food shortage. There have been calls for a second ‘green revolution’, but the first green revolution was based on intensive use of fertilisers and irrigation. Fertilisers are rocketing in price while irrigation is a less environmentally friendly option in a time of climate change.
Having previously run a highly visible campaign threatening to derail the imminent referendum on the EU’s Lisbon Treaty on account of the EU’s negotiating position in the WTO, the Irish Farmers Association has fallen back into line with it’s longstanding position of support for Irish membership of the EU. As previously noted, Ireland does spectacularly well out of the CAP, and it looks as though the IFA has extracted a promise from the new Irish prime minister Brian Cowen that he was prepared to veto any WTO deal that was bad for Ireland.