Phil Hogan points to positive future prospects for farming
“Unfortunately, predicting just when this will happen is a little more difficult,” the commissioner told an event in Brussels.
Mr Hogan said the immediate challenge is to use the instruments available through the Common Agricultural Policy to support producers through this difficult period and leave them well placed to benefit from the upturn when it comes.
“I understand very well the concerns of farmers who are suffering under huge pressure, quite often farmers who have taken on loans to invest in their enterprises which they are now trying to repay.
“I appreciate that for those farmers and many others it may be difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I think that there are times when we should take a step back and look beyond the crisis,” he said.
Mr Hogan said farming employs some 22m people in the EU and, together with the food sector, provides 44m jobs, many of which are located in rural and peripheral regions where there are relatively few alternative employment prospects.
“The CAP is very often seen in a one-dimensional way, exclusively through the prism of farming. In my view, we need to look at the CAP as a multi-dimensional policy — one that is an agricultural, economic, food safety, and social policy.
“That means that those of us who deal with the CAP on a daily basis, whether as beneficiaries or policy-makers have a responsibility to spell out to the rest of society just what the CAP delivers to them.
We must redouble our efforts in this regard and tackle the sometimes lazy narrative that the CAP is simply about subsidising food production, thus keeping food prices artificially high,” he said.
