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Mandelson: EU should ‘carefully reflect’ on its biofuels policy

With growing consensus that US and EU biofuel subsidies are among the principal contributors to recent global food price rises, termed a ‘silent tsunami’ by The Economist, EU Trade Commissioner today signaled that Europe needs to reconsider its target of achieving a 10 per cent biofuels mix in transport fuel by 2020. Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme this morning, Mandelson said:

“We’ve got to develop our biofuels policy intelligently… I think we need to carefully reflect on the approach that we’re taking.”

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Podcast: April Agriculture Council round-up with Roger Waite

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.

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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.

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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.

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Food security fears mount

Fears of unrest are increasing in developing countries as shortages develop of staple foods or prices increase substantially. Governments have cut import tariffs to cope with the problem, but hoarding to take advantage of future price rises has exacerbated the difficulties being encountered.

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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.”

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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. But Keith Good’s recent reporting on farmpolicy.com suggests that agreement is proving difficult to reach. There are interesting parallels but also significant differences between farm policy developments in the US and our own farm policy reform in the EU.

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The milk quota mess

As the debate goes on in the EU about whether milk quotas can be increased by 2 per cent as part of the soft landing when they are eventually abolished in 2015, it is an opportunity to reflect how milk quotas have affected the UK dairy industry. They were introduced in 1984 to ease the severe budgetary crisis brought about by the structural surplus of milk in Europe. They worked in terms of limiting production growth and coping with the budgetary crisis, but they brought a lot of unintended (or intended) problems in their wake.

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Well fancy that…

What a difference a change of ministerial portfolio makes! Back in 2006, Hilary Benn MP, Secretary of State for International Development, was strident in his criticisms of the CAP:

“Through the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), two fifths of the EU budget goes on subsidies and support to Europe’s farmers who represent 5% of Europe’s population, and produce less than 2% of Europe’s output. Most is not spent in the poorer parts of Europe where it is needed. Most goes to the biggest farming companies and landowners, not small farmers.”

Times change, Prime Ministers come and go, and Hilary Benn is now Secretary of State at the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. In this post he is spearheading the UK Government’s fight to ensure that massive CAP ‘income support’ payments continue to be paid to Europe’s biggest farming companies and landowners.

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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.

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