Source:  John Strak, MEATINGPLACE.COM, 11/19/10

The leaders of the EU farmers and cooperatives unions warned on Thursday that the plans to reform the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) after 2013 threaten European farmers’ ability to compete and would not help consumers.

“These reform plans will mean lower farm incomes across Europe and this will do nothing to ensure the sustainability of high quality food production in Europe,” Padraig Walshe, the Irish President of COPA (the federation of EU farmers’unions) said at a news briefing in Brussels.

Walshe went on to say, “Farmers are already losing market shares because they meet the highest standards in the world to ensure traceability of food, environmental protection and animal welfare. They have much higher costs than their competitors in non-EU countries. It is little wonder that the number of farmers in the EU has fallen by 25 per cent over the past decade and farmers are so heavily dependent on CAP support for their income.”

South American trade
Walshe also had strong words about the EU’s plans to liberalize trade with Latin America.

“These countries use growth promoters in their meat production even though they are banned in the EU. They have poor antibiotic controls and produce with the benefit of (genetic modification) technology,” he said. “A trade agreement would also cause more intensive farming methods and de-forestation in Mercosur countries, as shown by an impact assessment report, thus contradicting the EU’s objective of sustainable agriculture.”

Walshe told Meatingplace, “The only beneficiaries from these trading deals are the international trading companies like Cargill and ADM.”

On the environment Walshe said there must be real incentives for farmers to undertake the additional work and bear the costs, which would mean an increase in the current CAP budget.

Paolo Bruni, President of Cogeca (federation of European cooperative organizations) said the plans lack concrete measures needed to strengthen EU farmers and cooperatives’ position in the food chain and ensure that they get a fairer share of the retail price.

Both Walshe and Bruni responded to questions about the Commission’s ideas on capping subsidy payments to larger farmers by saying they do not support it and that any limitation on payments to farmers according to farm size would work against increasing the efficiency of farming in Europe.

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