Chirac: the farmers’ guardian
Since he became the country’s minister of agriculture and rural development in 1972, Chirac has been known as a champion of French farmers’ interests.
Thirty-four years later, it was Chirac who stood up to EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, warning him that the EU could make no further concessions on agricultural trade in WTO talks.
Eleven months ago, it was Chirac, flanked by Bertie Ahern, who emerged triumphant from the EU leaders’ budget negotiations, having threatened to veto the budget deal if it reduced farm subsidies.
As a result, EU agricultural spending is secured until 2014.
Arguably, Europe might have pursued a cheap food policy based on imports years ago, without Chirac’s intervention — a policy which would have left small Irish family farms even more cruelly exposed than they currently are to world trade.
Chirac has stood by farmers because he believes Europe was largely built on agriculture, and that it must remain at the heart of the European ambition.
But even he admits it must change radically.
He has now urged the EU to start planning for non-food-based farming, calling for a European conference on the future of agriculture, where experts can begin reflecting on the farming of the years 2015 to 2020.
Chirac said the new frontiers of EU agriculture will be based on bio-technologies and non-food-based farming.
He said technological advances and the need for sustainable development will allow farmers to look to an array of opportunities such as the manufacture of biodegradable bags — to replace plastic bags — and biofuels, from agricultural products.
Crops should be used to produce vegetable-based fuels and chemicals. He set a target of 10% of French fuel production to come from crops by 2015.
He said agriculture remains at the heart of this century’s challenges, but it must expand to include non-food products, to tackle those challenges.
Meanwhile, Chirac has pledged to safeguard the CAP budget deal which he and Bertie Ahern extracted in 2005. He warned that the CAP cannot be changed until after 2013.
And the new CAP after 2013 must maintain community preference and public aid for the social and environmental aspects of agriculture — which cannot only be remunerated by prices, according to Chirac.
Unfortunately, he will not be in office himself in 2013 to head up the defence of the CAP. It is unclear if he will even run for a third presidential term in 2007.
With world trade talks now seemingly finished until next year, Chirac’s “non-food-based farming” advice may well be the last intervention by this powerful guardian angel of EU farmers.
