Brussels, 21/01/2014 (Agence Europe) - Germany's new farm minister, Hans-Peter Friedrich, has doubts about the greening of European farm aid in the new common agricultural policy (CAP). He says that all available land should be cultivated.
At a press conference on 16 January during Green Week in Berlin, Friedrich said there was an ethical and moral duty constantly to produce food on the farmland available. A member, like his predecessor Ilse Aigner, of the Bavarian conservative party, the new minister said he had reservations about the greening of the CAP, adding that he was not planning to back organic farming with any greater strength (it is currently growing at well below the targets set a few years ago). He argued that it was consumers who decided at the end of the day what was produced and niches of production should not be subsidised.
Warning from Dacian Ciolos. EU Agriculture Commissioner Dacian Ciolos said that it had been decided not to go into detail, but to leave it for each country to decide on its own rules for greening, but member states have the duty to prove that the measures they take are of benefit to biodiversity and soil quality. If they are not beneficial, the Commission will reject them, he warned. The chair of the German federation of farmers, DBV, Joachim Rukwied, welcomed the new minister's comments. Organisers say some 30,000 people demonstrated in Berlin on 18 January demanding that farming should be more environmentally friendly. (LC/transl.fl)