Common Agricultural Policy “black sheep” of EU policies?
During his seminar on February 20, Mr. Ootstra - former deputy Permanent Representative to the EU, and former Director-General at the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality –contributed to this debate by raising attention to the upcoming challenges the EU agricultural sector and evidently, the EU consumer is going to face in the near future.
After leading us through the troubled history of the CAP, Mr. Ootstra called for the continuation of reforms and further simplification in the sector as “two-thirds of EU legislation relates to agriculture”. At the moment, he explained, the CAP receives 38% of EU budget, which divides up between the two pillars of the policy: firstly, direct income support and market and price regulation, secondly, landscape prevention. There is also an eastward tendency in the financing of the agricultural sector since the enlargements with Central- and Eastern Europe. As he warned, now “there are three times as many farmers under the same financial umbrella than before”. Therefore, there should be a “pull from national research efforts to the European level”.
Placing the debate into a global context, the real challenges for the EU agricultural policy are food security, environmental protection and bioenergy. Food security in quality and also in prices is going to be expected by the people. “Farming prices are about to rise”, and so are input prices, energy and metal. Mr. Ootstra also touched upon the topic of GMOs (genetically modified organisms) and their impact. “The world is already filled with GMOs, and it is done so out of need.” While, according to Mr. Ootstra, the EU opposes them, he thinks that they “can help to fill the gaps” in supply.
In his final remark, he simply summarized his feelings about the future of agriculture as: “producers will hope to sell and customers… well, that depends on where you live.”