I have never understood… I have never understood by which mental aberration the Europeans jealously defending their country's cultural identity, language and traditions do not feel obliged to do the same for agriculture. Agriculture, however, has contributed as much as religious beliefs, literature, music and architecture in shaping down the centuries the identity of their countries - its landscapes, lifestyles, mentality and citizens' traditions. Our forebears were aware of this and always kept a close link between the fruits of their land and their gods and goddesses, between the rhythm of social and political life and the rhythm of the seasons and farming activity.
What is true for each country is also true for Europe as a whole, because traditions are superimposed on each other, despite the differences in climate and longitude - the wine roads that criss-cross the continent, for example. Farming also has the vital task of ensuring food self-sufficiency for the European continent. How superficial and unaware are the princes who govern us when it comes to their neglect of this aspect, dooming it to be forgotten! Yet Europe will never have genuine political independence as long as it does not ensure autonomy with regard to food. Otherwise it will remain subject to all types of blackmail, as if the blackmail of oil were not sufficient. What is the point of trying to escape from the blackmail of oil, partially at least, only to voluntarily subject oneself to an even more serious and wholly unjustified dependence given that it does not exist at present? This does not mean blocking imports. The EU is the main importer of agricultural products in the world, and will remain so. But it must be capable of meeting its population's food needs in case of need. Politicians who fail to take account of this will have to assume very heavy responsibility. This is no theoretical threat since Brussels calculations (never denied) indicate that the end of "Community preference" for agriculture and fully opening up borders to global competition would lead to the disappearance of four-fifths of European food companies. Most of the landscape would return to the wild.
From Tuscany to the Douro region. I have already discussed a number of considerations in my column in the past regarding farming's place in our civilisation. Today I add ideas I have just read by Slav author Andrzej Stasiuk, outlining his experience of two weeks in Tuscany. He wrote: I can say I have felt on my skin the perfect synthesis of culture, civilisation and nature found in Tuscany. Beauty and harmony accompanied me from the moment I woke up until the moment I fell asleep. He went off the beaten track, into woods, where he fell asleep under the stars, which he felt to be part of the natural order of things because the landscape was like a villa in a huge garden. At one point between Florence and Sansepolcro, he wrote, I felt like a barbarian astonished at the sight of what he doesn't even want to conquer. Tuscany is only an example, of course, glittering as it might be, of the synthesis of culture, civilisation and nature Stasiuk writes about. It is everywhere in Europe, in different forms, the outcome of patience, sweat of the brow and the good nature of generations. The last area, as far as I am aware, to be added to UNESCO's world heritage sites is the wine-growing region of Douro in northern Portugal. The patient and dogged determination of human beings had transformed this vast, rocky landscape into an agricultural monument, where port wine grows. A programme largely funded by the EU ensured the safeguard of this area, defined by the UN as "a cultural landscape, changing and alive".
Everything can begin again, worse than before. This is what happens when traditions and landscapes are betrayed. Europe had a taster of this when the Common Agricultural Policy failed to change from intensive farming for the sake of volume (vital in post-war Europe with children suffering from hunger in Europe and a desire to feed all Europeans) to a more extensive farming paying greater respect to the law of nature. The effects of this delay have been disastrous - excess monocultures, compromised biodiversity, food mountains and partial desertification in some areas, over-sharp fall in rural populations and rush to the cities (leading to the devastation of suburbs that disfigure our metropolises) and imbalance between areas. Most of this has been corrected through the series of reforms to the CAP, but it can all begin again, worse than before, if Europe gives way to pressure from people wanting to scrap the Community preference and force the EU to open its borders to farm products from around the world.
One only has to cross the Adriatic to parts of former Yugoslavia to see the effects of dying agriculture. A writer from the region witnessed with his own eyes the abandonment of Kosovo's former vineyards, once carefully maintained by Serb peasants, left to go to rack and ruin for religious reasons (!) by Kosovars, now nothing but rocky, barren outcrops. Andrzej Stasiuk, quoted above, was given the impression by some wild, shapeless, Albanian landscapes of a world dating back to before the arrival of human beings on the planet.
The CAP, improved on several occasions (always against the will of the most powerful farming lobbies which want to hang on to the partially abusive benefits the CAP gave big landowners and big farm trading companies in particular) now seems to be capable of meeting the requirements of our civilisation. The imminent arrival of countries of Central and Eastern Europe in the EU will provide benefits of a richer fauna and flora (because better protected). CAP aid will be connected with tight respect for Community preference for these countries, their farmers will receive aid and their products will benefit from free access to all the common market in as far as they too buy European. It will be easier for the EU to restrict or eliminate most export refunds since the entire continental market will gradually become preferential.
Stupid slogans at such a high price. In my view, the above comments are not commonplaces, but not everybody agrees with this. Despite the long battle to get the EU and then the international community to accept the idea of farming's multifunctionality, EU agriculture still pays a very high price for slogans that have absolutely no significance but have a disastrous rabble-rousing impact. Two examples: saying that farming is too expensive for the EU budget, and statements along the lines that the EU pays 2 euros a day for every cow while millions of human beings have less than that to live on. The fact that the first slogan is often bandied about by British ministers and echoed by Convention Vice-Chairman Giuliano Amato even (repeated by university professors who advise the European Commission) does not make it any less inept. If one third of the EU budget goes to the CAP, it is simply because agricultural spending is wholly European and reduces by the same amount (if not more) national budgets. If the importance of agriculture is properly understood, the cost of the CAP is far from excessive. The problem is not spending less but spending better. This improvement has been underway for quite a few years now - one only has to look at the falling expenditure on export refunds. The second slogan is pure demagogy. It isn't the cows of course that get the two euros a day, but the farmers, who are continuing the centuries-long occupation of raising livestock and safeguarding the impact this has on the balance of nature, for food security and the dairy industry. Every Swiss cow costs more than an EU cow, but the Swiss are right to safeguard as far as possible Swiss dairy farming, cowbells included. Leave the calculations to a handful of British politicians (I say politicians because the population of the UK, particularly in rural areas and hillsides thinks very differently), economists and university professors who can only think in terms of productivity.
Humanity's priorities. The time for these comments has clearly come to me ahead of the Cancun summit, where the true challenges of farming must be borne in mind. Humanity is betting its future with regard to two fundamental issues - safeguarding the natural environment and feeding the world's hungry who currently make up the majority of the world's population (with more joining their ranks day by day). All international policy should focus on these two points. Famine in Africa in particular feeds local wars and finally solving the problem will require peace and democracy on the one hand and restimulating local food production and ensuring biodiversity on the other. Faced with global famine, it is crazy that the only remedy being proposed by some negotiators is the full opening of the EU food market. The result would be to destroy EU agriculture and make the situation of poor countries elsewhere in the world far worse, the benefit of multinationals and big business. Poor and under-nourished countries need to re-launch food production and certainly shouldn't focus on single crops for export which devastate the land and put farmers out of business to the benefit of speculators and traders (and corrupt politicians). Non-governmental organisations screaming for the scrapping of the Community preference are either naïve and being used or are acting in bad faith (often both). It is essential to support the difficult battle Pascal Lamy and Franz Fischler will be waging on behalf of the European Union as negotiators at the WTO. I will return to this tomorrow. (F.R.)