EU to send €1bn to help world’s poorest farmers

NON-EU farmers in poor countries are to get €760m extra from the EU to help them increase production — but not from unused Common Agriculture Policy spending, as had first been proposed last July.

In the summer, European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso first proposed the aid, after soaring world food prices left the EU with a surplus of unspent agricultural subsidies.

However, Germany and other countries complained that these funds should be returned to member states.

Last week, EU budget officials and members of parliament agreed to release €1 billion, €760m of which is additional to the EU’s existing aid to poor countries.

The funds are targeted at helping farmers in developing countries lift their production, by buying seeds and fertiliser. The money will be released in three phases up to 2010, with an instalment of €270 million due already for this year.

It will include €420m from the EU’s flexibility instrument; €100m from the existing emergency aid reserve; a €240m top-up in the emergency aid reserve; and €240m from redeployed funds (mainly from the EU’s instrument for stability.

More than 923 million people are estimated to go hungry around the world, and aid agencies say the agricultural progress for which this EU money is earmarked has two to four times the poverty reduction impact of non-agricultural progress, for on the poorest people.

Oliver Buston, European Director of ONE, a global advocacy and campaigning organisation dedicated to fighting extreme poverty, warned that when member states write the cheque for the EU’s €1bn fund, they must not take this funding from their own aid programmes. He said the vision and leadership of the EU’s President Barroso, the tenacity of Louis Michel, and the work of key European Parliamentarians was crucial in getting the funding through.

Doubts had been raised about the plan in recent months, as governments were forced to spend billions to shore up banks, and EU car-makers requested €40bn.