Boel gets message via blog
The clamour of calls on the Commissioner from all 27 member states illustrates how difficult Common Agricultural Policy decision-making can be.
The Commissioner says it’s very important to her to listen to real people — farmers, and the consumers on which agriculture ultimately relies. She has used her “blog” to hammer home some of her main messages. “If we don’t make what the consumers want to eat they simply go elsewhere,” she says.
“Sure, it is more expensive to produce food in Europe than in Brazil. But we have so many things in our favour: unequalled standards of animal welfare, environmental protection and food safety; internationally-renowned products with long histories behind them; huge expertise in marketing and promotion.”
She says her motto is “Quality, quality, quality.” “Perhaps things are even simpler than that”, says the Commissioner. “First and foremost, we should be eating more healthily. It’s not rocket science. We need to encourage our children to eat better, particularly fruit and vegetables.”
Such comments have drawn fire. A Swedish farmer said they had a campaign called “Heading to the cleanest agriculture in the world“, but nothing is left of it but farmers with costs. “Quality is fine but we need to be able to produce quality in reasonable quantity as well,” she was told by a sales and marketing manager with a major seed business in the UK, who said many farmers want set-aside ended.
An Italian farmer said he produces his own stone grinded egg-pasta from wheat, a hand made, all organic food, but people tell him the price is ‘very high’.
The Commissioner admitted there is still a gap between what people say and how they behave when they get to the supermarket. “People like me just have to keep banging the drum.”
She rejected an Irish allegation that she was willing to adopt the traditional British cheap food policy, in the interest of EU industrial exports. “I’ve got no idea where this idea comes from”, said the Commissioner.
Other Irish bloggers told her Ireland may become one large industrial unit, while our land is used primarily for leisure and recreation, or that letting the market find its natural level without interference would free farmers to satisfy local demand for fresh produce, and high prices or low production could be tackled by subsidies — not for farmers, but for consumers, for example, vouchers for EU (or local) produce.
Bjorn from Sweden has bombarded the blog with support for GMO crops such as Round Up ready corn, and the Amflora potato for extra starch production. “Once a GMO has been judged not to be harmful to health or the environment, it can be used. Most importantly, the choice must be left to the consumer,” was the answer.
A Spanish correspondent warned of abandoned villages, and called for accelerated rural development to make rural life equitable, and to increase investment.
WTO is an ongoing topic. Several favoured a WTO agreement, but one blogger said global farming is a non-starter because the cost varies so much.
Fischer Boel’s website has sparked an interesting row over why she chose to communicate in English.
A Spanish contributor pointed out it advantaged native English speakers, who happen to be the least enthusiastic about the EU, and supported an English speaking bureaucracy which owes its position more to its skill with language than its personal or political worth.
The proof of this is the many contributions from Eurosceptics — with comments like “Roll on the day the CAP is finally abolished”; and “the biggest scam on the planet”.
One blogger pointed out that the very pleasant part of England where he lived was due to the hard work and care of generations of farmers and landowners — not to EU subsidies for “protecting the environment”.
There were a few calls to allow markets regulate themselves and allow entrepreneurs to risk investment or not. Instead, said a wine producer, the amount of bureaucracy needed to plant one hectare of vineyard is comparable to that required to build a house. Too many controls stop people responding to the market, warned a similarly minded correspondent.
Sensible sounding suggestions include locating farm enterprises according to nature — sugar beet in central Europe, vines in the south — rather than force nature by irrigation and growing in greenhouses, adding to costs and pollution.
One of the hard questions put to the Commissioner was if she would ever eliminate all subsidies to farmers? Her answer: she’s not in favour of eliminating the CAP, but it has gone through a revolution since 2003 and reform is ongoing.
Bloggers revealed little support for industrial biofuel production, with one saying raw rapeseed oil produced at the farm was better, and other warning of subsidies for large farms and biofuel processors, often from imported raw material.
For a rare example of plain talking in the EU, http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/fischer-boel is worth a visit.
