Farming is now a gamble

A BETTER way must be found to run the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy than to announce shock proposals to turn the policy upside down.

While the European Commission takes its August holiday, farmers across Europe are left wondering if their industry will be left untouched until 2006, as was promised in their Agenda 2000 shake-up, or if they will have to face into an entirely new way of farming next year.

The Commission in Brussels has left not just farmers on tenterhooks, but the entire food industry which takes their produce and the farm inputs industry which supplies farmers.