Phil Hogan says EU policy stands firm on three-legged stool
He told a conference in Athens last week that the Common Agricultural Policy is an economic, environmental and social policy.
“The environmental leg of the stool is crucially important and without three legs on a stool you all know what happens,” he said Stressing that the environmental dimension of CAP is here to stay, he said he “will not stand by and watch us lower our level of environmental ambition.”
Mr Hogan said there are undoubted opportunities for European agriculture and the future is green growth and increasingly dynamic markets.
The key to achieving these opportunities is sustainability. The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) recently identified sustainable agriculture as being paramount to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.
He said that the FAO also estimates that agricultural production must rise by 60 per cent by 2050 to feed growing population.
“Europe and European farmers can be part of the solution and we must help them to do so through the CAP, which itself has delivered food security for the people of Europe for more than 50 years,” he said.
Mr Hogan accepted that the last few years have been difficult for the sector and he was certainly not suggesting any complacency.
“I know only too well how fragile recovery in the agricultural markets can be and all of us know that many of the potential challenges to that recovery relate to issues about which we can do nothing.
“The challenge, therefore, is to shape and sharpen our policy instruments to empower farmers to face these challenges,” he told the conference, held by Copa and Cogeca, the umbrella bodies for European farmers and co-ops.
Predicting there are tremendous opportunities for European agriculture and farmers,
Mr Hogan said he believed those will be delivered through green growth and dynamic markets.
