We are urgently developing research requirements with other European laboratories to make sure we understand and the disease (Schmallenberg) better.NFU fears over ‘backward’ CAP talks
EUROPE is in danger of turning the Common Agricultural Policy into a social and environmental scheme with little focus on productive agriculture, the NFU has cautioned.
The European Commission hosted a major two-day conference in Brussels this week to discuss results of an online public consultation on how the CAP should move forward when the current scheme expires in 2012.
But too many people across Europe are intent on taking the scheme ‘backwards to some sort of 19th century cottage industry’ warned Tom Hind, NFU Head of Economics and International Affairs.
Mr Hind said much of the conference, attended by 600 delegates, had focused on the social role of agriculture and how the sector needed to do more to deliver public environmental goods.
He feared there had been ‘precious little recognition’ that farming needed to prosper in the market place and urged policy makers to ‘get real’ and ‘face up to the reality’ that the world needed a lot more food.
“European farmers should, indeed must, play their part in this challenge. More competitiveness and productivity is essential if farming is to increase production sustainably.
“Any measures that might harm competitiveness, such as discouraging economies of scale - as some in the audience appeared to advocate - should be resisted.
“Indeed, it was a concern that some people appear to want to take agriculture backwards to some sort of 19th century cottage industry,” he said.
Paul Rooke, head of policy at the Agriculture Industries Confederation, pointed the finger at non-agricultural, single-issue pressure groups for taking agriculture in the wrong direction.
He said: “Delivering the agricultural industry and productivity which the world requires is not consistent with preservation of a historic rural idyll – we must work to ensure the UK is not alone in recognising that reality.”
Agriculture Commissioner Dacian Ciolos told conference delegates he wanted to develop ‘a strong, efficient and balanced’ CAP – a phrase most delegates found it hard to disagree with.
However, the difficulty will come in defining exactly what ‘strong, efficient and balanced’ means.
Mr Hind said the CAP should ‘help the farming industry get to a place in the future where it can be substantially less reliant on public support’.
The Commission is due to publish its intial proposals on the CAP post 2013 in the autumn.
Readers' comments (2)
Dairy Farmer | 23 July 2010 11:13 am
I agree, if things don't change there's a real risk there won't be enough young farmers with the right skills in 10 or 20 years time. With China and India importing more food, the price is going to go up and European consumers could be in for a nasty shock!
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Murdoch | 23 July 2010 11:43 am
Hind has it spot on with his last comment: 'the farming industry needs to be less reliant on public support'. For that policy makers must give farmers a fair and competitive market place where decent production is rewarded by a decent price
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