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27 May 2013 | | | |

Draft Reform Of the CAP: Stealing from Farmers?

Complaints From The Civil Society over the New CAP 2014-2020 Ignored

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Among all the European Union’s common policies, the agricultural policy is the oldest and still the most important in the European budget (about 40%). Created in 1957 with the Treaty of Rome, it was officially implemented in 1962. At the beginning, it had five aims: to increase agricultural productivity, to bring an adequate quality of life for farmers, to stabilize markets and prices, ensuring food supplies and fair prices for consumers. Europeans wanted to share their ambitions and their means to feed the post-war Europe. Since then, some principles have been added, such as the respect for environment, the improvement of animal welfare and the sustainability of rural communities. Nowadays, the CAP is based on two pilars: the support of agricultural markets and prices, and rural development. It is being currently discussed and reformed by the EU.

The CAP was first reformed in 1992, when a direct payment for farmers to compensate for the lower guaranteed prices and a partial set-aside was created in order to reduce the unmanageable overproduction of the 80s. These subsidies were proportional to the production of each farmer. In 2005-2006, a «decoupling» of these subsidies was decided, meaning that now there were fewer links (or none) between the production and the amount of money given by the EU. The subsidies are now linked with the amount of hectares or animals of each farmer, which gives way to a large gap among European producers. The most important of them has been promoted by the CAP: for instance, those who are dedicated to grain production enjoyed the mechanization of agricultural production. Thus, about 20% of farmers, those owning the most extensive lands and some economic groups, received nearly 80% of direct payments.

The CAP reform draft presented by the European Commission in October 2011, which should be implemented from 2014 to 2020 seems ambitious, but necessary, according to current trends and expectations of citizens and farmers.

«So we would like to see the CAP ecologically compatible and providing food and farming, we would like to ensure that this policy supports rural livelihoods, because we have seen in the last years some issues about the fact that a lot of young people are going away from rural areas, and basically there are not enough farmers to produce our food. Then, on the other side, a policy which would support biodiversity and would ensure that the effects of climate change caused by agriculture are smaller, and of course ensuring that this policy would be contributing to equitable and sustainable trade and respect for the concept of food sovereignty», said Stanka Becheva, from Friends Of the Earth Europe, of the Food, Agriculture and Biodiversity Program.

This reform aims to more transparency, a fairer redistribution of payments (currently Italian or Greek farmers receive 400 euros per hectare against less than 100 euros for Latvians), an emphasis on ecology (by setting aside land, maintaining permanent pasture or crop diversification), with beneficial effects in terms of quality. But the pressure from some member states, agribusiness lobbies and big farmers have prevented the initial scope of the reform. Agriculture Ministers finally agreed to spend 30% of direct payments on the environment, but it was decided to reduce their percentage for agricultural areas of ecological interest and to introduce more flexibility for other forms of assistance. Each State has free choice to implement or not subsidy ceilings for largest farmers.

Also, the new CAP doesn’t really consider its impact on developing countries. In the 70s, in order to cope with a situation of unmanageable overproduction and to sell its growing surplus, the European Community developed massive subsidies for exports. Through the liberalization of borders implemented by the EU (in the context of structural adjustment plans of the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO and bilateral agreements), developing countries became the main destinations of European exports, victims of agricultural dumping on the markets. Today, low prices associated with direct payments still allow companies to export agricultural products to be sold at a lower cost than European production.

Karin Ulmer, member of the NGO Aproved, talked about «a great potential for damaging and diminishing local farmers opportunities to supply their own market, and mainly concerning the food commodities.»

Amendments have been proposed to emphasize this aspect in the reform process. It was mainly aiming to establish an evaluation system and a complaints mechanism. They have all been rejected. With the Lisbon Treaty, the European Parliament has gained a co-decision power with the Commission on the CAP. Thus, the current reform gave way to this situation, which also includes the 28 members of the EU. We wonder if the decisions will take much longer or be more difficult to take at the heart of an already very complex institutional system.

«Our main argument is that at the moment the CAP ignores the external impact and promotes European investments, agribusiness in Africa and promotes European exports», stated Karin.

Europe feeds on Southern lands and starves their population. It imports, more than it exports, productions of about 34 millions of hectares (which is more that the French agricultural surface).

«We have seen that the production situation there of soy is really bad, GM plantations taking lands from rural communities in Paraguay, Brazil, Uruguay, using a lot of pesticides, driving local communities out of their lands ...», added Stanka.

This situation is not the only one: the way the European Commission has found in response to its submission to the import of soybean was to reintroduce, several weeks ago, animal meal to feed its cattle. It obviously set off numerous protests after the health disaster 20 years ago, with Creutzfeld-Jakob or "mad cow" disease. And it’s understandable: just think about the recent food scandal in which about 750 tons of horse meat was sold to people who believed they were buying beef, only for reasons of profitability.

José Bové, a French agricultural unionist and member of Via Campesina said: "Findus (the questioned brand) is the tree that hides the forest" with reference to the need to reintegrate transparency reforms in the CAP.

We also have to make reference to the situation of European farmers and their lack of future prospects because of the crisis (debt, depression, isolation, judicial foreclosures, low prices) which is still causing people to commit suicide.

«At the end we will end up with instruments that are not really addressing the urgent needs of agriculture and rural food system», states Stanka Becheva.

http://www.edenpaca.com/

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