Climate change a grave threat to agriculture, warns Fischer Boel

CLIMATE change is still one of the gravest long- term threats and could land a hammer blow on agricultural production in parts of Europe and the rest of the world, European Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel warned in Stockholm yesterday.

“Let’s make no mistake: Climate change is not going to treat us more kindly just because we’re having problems with our banks and with economic growth,” she said.

Fischer Boel said the reality of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is light-years away from the poor image that has clung to it in the past.

She told the European Liberal Democrats Congress that the days of the beef and butter mountains, heavy use of export subsidies and of questionable environmental credentials are all long gone.

“Instead, the CAP is strongly geared towards competitiveness and sustainability.

“Support for agricultural prices now plays a more modest and more fitting role than once it did.

“The main tool for supporting farmers is the decoupled direct payment. These payments do not depend on production.

“Therefore, they leave farmers free to listen to the market and produce whatever it needs. In the quantities that it needs.

“Furthermore, the payments are linked to demanding standards of environmental care, animal welfare and public health, which brings them much closer to the concerns of the citizen,” she said.

Fischer Boel said the EU is at the same time placing an ever-greater emphasis on the so-called second pillar of the CAP – rural development policy.

Through this policy, the EU is investing in sharpening the competitiveness of the farm sector, in caring for the countryside, in helping rural communities to diversify economically and in raising their quality of life.

She said the price rises which hit food markets last year and earlier this year shook the world. Even in the EU, worried articles poured off the presses.

“People looked into the future and thought: “If we’re struggling to feed ourselves now, how will things look in 2050, when there are 9 billion of us?”

Fischer Boel said the CAP health check is intended to update the reformed policy to keep it in line with the changing European and global context.

Fischer Boel said she hoped to see a political agreement on the health check proposals in the EU council of agricultural ministers later this month.