Taoiseach defends the CAP
In a 2,550 word analysis he rejected arguments made against the CAP in recent months by critics, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and underlined how it still has a vital role to play in the modern Europe.
It was a timely intervention by the Taoiseach as Governments across Europe resume duties following the summer holidays and as world trade talks enter a crucial phase ahead of a ministerial meeting in Hong Kong in December.
The defeat of the French and Dutch referendums on the European constitution earlier this year led to a major debate on the CAP with calls that it be further reformed and indeed abolished because it is absorbing 40% of the overall EU budget.
In his spirited defence of CAP funding, the Taoiseach did what all wise people do on such occasions he started with the foundation document, which in this case is the Treaty of Rome.
The objectives of the CAP as set down in that Treaty back in 1957 are to increase agricultural productivity, ensure a fair standard of living for the agricultural community, stabilise markets, assure the availability of supplies and ensure that supplies reach consumers at reasonable prices.
Ensuring the availability of food supplies is, according to the Taoiseach, the most important of the original objectives. Europe has that measure of security now but it did not always have it.
"When the CAP was established, Europe was a deficit area for many basic food products. It was the CAP which corrected that situation. Its price support mechanisms offset the diseconomies of small-scale production on European farms and made it profitable for Europe's small farmers to produce more," he said.
What the Taoiseach effectively did in his address was to put food security at the very heart of the growing debate about the future of Europe and the Common Agricultural Policy.
He argued there still is a need to worry about food security for a number of reasons. One of the most important is that people can never be sure that supplies would not be disrupted by political instability, or even war, in a supplier country. There were examples of the consequences of such disruption in the case of oil supplies.
John Dillon, the president of the Irish Farmers Association, who welcomed the Taoiseach's speech, was quick to take up that point when he warned that dependence on globalised food supplies carries inherent risks to Europe's food security through political events and natural disasters like droughts or hurricanes.
His comments were underlined that same day by the reports from the southern United States of the havoc and loss of life caused by Hurricane Katrina as it tore across that part of the world.
Mr Dillon noted that the hurricane had also led to a massive disruption of US milling wheat and grain exports on to the world market through the Mississippi ports, with traders unwilling to quote for certain products.
Indeed, the Taoiseach took some time in his speech to warn that food security can indeed be too easily taken for granted. He pointed out that just over half a century ago, much of Europe was still subject to food rationing. Indeed in the late 1940s hunger stalked many European countries.
"It would be grossly irresponsible if the European Union with its 450 million inhabitants, the vast majority of whom live in urban areas, did not place food security at the heart of its agricultural policy," he said.
But vulnerability of food supplies would not be, according to the Taoiseach, the only negative result of a significant cutback in the CAP.
There would also be a serious outflow of labour from the land of Europe.
This would add to pressure on non-agricultural labour markets and on urban housing markets.
Farm size in the more fertile areas would increase and land in the marginal areas would be abandoned. The social and economic fabric of rural areas would be damaged, and the contribution of rural life to the cultural diversity of Europe would be weakened.
The physical environment would also be adversely affected as the management of landscape features such as hedges, stone walls, wetlands and woodlands breaks down.
Mr Ahern rightly argued that it is simply not credible to call for reform of a policy the most recent reform of which is only now being implemented and he rejected repeated claims that the cost of the CAP absorbs too high a percentage of the EU budget compared with other activities.
"That percentage is high only because agriculture is the only fully-funded EU policy and because the total EU budget is so low," he explained, pointing out that the CAP is not the costly administrative monstrosity that some would make it out to be.
"Yes, it costs money but not disproportionately so. And there is a return on that money. It provides security of food supplies and reasonable confidence about the safety and quality of those supplies.
"It supports conservation of the environment and respect for the welfare of animals, as well as the preservation of the family farm and the social and cultural benefits that flow from vibrant rural communities," he said.
