The true priorities. I do not hide the fact that I have a few concerns about recent turns in the Doha trade talks at the WTO. My fear is certainly not that the outcome will be less spectacular than desired in some milieus because I do not share the opinion that there is not enough free trade in the world today and therefore huge expansion of trade should be the top priority. No, my fear is rather that the EU will be the only partner putting forward further offerings and concessions, faced with partners which seem to have only one objective - getting hold of the EU food market. This aim has nothing to do with the true global priorities of combatting the famine that is threatening vast swathes of humanity, and stopping the destruction of nature. The opening of the EU farm market being demanded by Brazil and other big farm exporting countries would have the opposite effect. By destroying farming in the EU, it would reduce the total world supply of food (the EU is the biggest donor to poor countries) and would lead to a devastating ecological disaster.
It would also have the result of eliminating food exports from the poorest countries to the EU market, exports which are subject to the trade preferences the EU grants mainly to Africa and which, in the event of 'erga omnes' liberalisation, would be swept aside by competing producers from other, more efficient, continents benefiting from better natural conditions. All Africa would be left with is disastrous reliance on a single cash crop (peanuts in one country, cocoa in another, or tobacco), a left-over from their colonial past, destroying traditional farming to feed local populations, with the result of forcing peasants to abandon the countryside and flock to seek their fortune in cities bursting at the seams, artificially boosted by new arrivals from the countryside, forcing the countries in question to relay for ever on imported food. It is exactly the opposite that is needed, namely re-launching traditional agriculture and updating it. What a creation of myths - claiming that fully opening up the world farm markets would work in the favour of the poorest countries!
The farm competitiveness trap. What I have just outlined seems so obvious to me that only reaction is called for to the mountain of lies built up to hide reality and defend the interests of big business, a handful of multinationals and big landowners -indignation. Another argument is also coming to light to justify fully opening up the EU farm market -boosting competitiveness. The EU's response should be 'not that, please, we've paid enough already!' In the first phase of the Common Agriculture Policy, the EU had to give priority to increasing food production because there were hungry children in the EU after the Second World War. Luckily it didn't take long to become autonomous in food. After that, faced with unacceptable abuse of the system (farmers are no saints - hey can be as selfish and grasping as any other group of people), each round of reform of the CAP had the aim of moving from environmentally damaging industrial farming to focus on high quality products, extensive rather than intensive farming that respects both nature and high quality standards. The concept of productivity cannot be transferred from industry to farming without adaptation. The EU has already experienced the painful way that industrial productivity does not work for farming.
The saddest and most spectacular example of this experience was the mad cow crisis. Mad cow disease is the result of aiming to cut costs by forcing cattle to eat a totally unnatural ground up meat and bone meal diet rather than being vegetarians as nature intended. Herbivores which have been man's friends for generations, were turned into carnivores and given other animals' carcasses to eat. Ancient wisdom knows that this goes against Mother Nature - as the writings of Plutarch prove. But the logic of competitiveness and greed tempted animal feed manufacturers to act unscrupulously - and at what price! The second example is the way some pig farmers violated EU rules on maximum nitrate levels, thereby ending up by contaminating the water table in the search of profit.
In some zones, agriculture has become the main source of pollution, even worse than the chemical industry. Children can no longer drink running water! It has become too dangerous. Once again, the mirage of maximum productivity has been undermined.
Those really responsible for “avian-flu”. A third case is coming to light: scientists are beginning to understand that those responsible for the spread of bird flu are not migratory birds but certain industrial chicken farms! These farms are often an example of man's cruelty to defenceless and domesticated animals, which since the dawn of time have been humanity's trusty companions in its development. If exploitation becomes excessive, nature takes revenge. The following is an extract of what I have just read in the French weekly, “Le Point” (No. 1757) on the spread but not the origin of bird flu. Leon Bennun, director of “Birdlife International” rejects the accusations levelled at the natural migration of birds and denounced “industrial migration”: today, millions of farmed chickens and ducks are being driven across the country, “globalisation has transformed the chicken into a migratory species and movements across the world take place 365 days a year, which is different from the seasonal migrations of wild birds”. The few wild ducks and swans that carried the virus, discovered in Europe “had probably been contaminated through contact with poultry farms”, affirms the newspaper. The EU's attempts to eliminate ignoble aspects in some of these farms, certainly has a cost (which is minimal for the consumer), but which has to be agreed to. It also, at the same time, makes precautions indispensable with regard to countries not applying the same standards.
In Europe, nature is in danger. In the same way, protection of European plant and animal biodiversity (or what remains of it), the safeguard of our landscapes, cultivated over centuries, the maintaining or re-establishment of territorial balance, is essential for countering urban sprawl, which in some Member States is at the origin of most of the social and economic difficulties of the big cities. The Commission's brand new document on the decline of biodiversity in Europe, proposes an action plan for tackling urban sprawl which is astounding. It affirms that eco-systems in Europe have suffered more than those in all the other continents and that more than half of the wetlands and richest farming areas from a point of view of nature, have already been lost (see our bulletin No. 9197). The disappearance of flora is even more serious than climate change as “once a species disappears, no step backwards is possible”. The Commission's plan seeks to involve different efforts, investments and protection in “reducing the negative repercussions of international trade”. This goal figures among the objectives of the plan.
The real priorities. My conclusion is simple, maintaining farming on the whole of Europe's territory is vital for European civilisation. The artificial increase in productivity is not an acceptable response at all to the challenge of global competition (except in some new Member States that have still not reached the desired level of modernisation). Further efforts must be made to train farmers, respect nature and improve the quality of produce. In international trade, agricultural priorities for the EU remain the protection of origin (unfairly abused in some third countries, including some of the richest countries) and in the gradual establishment of global standards for respecting nature. In parallel, the EU should fight for maintaining the “preferences” it grants to African countries and others on the UN list of less developed countries. A European Commission that at the same time publishes the above mentioned document on biodiversity but which gives in to additional demands to those which the EU has already agreed concerning the demands of big agricultural exporting countries, would be a serious contradiction in itself and would also sacrifice the essential interests of Europe in favour of protection of sectoral interests, which may indeed look respectable, but which should in fact be subordinate to priority demands.
Several declarations by some of Europe's most distinguished leaders, including Chancellor Schüssel, the President of the European Council, on the importance of agricultural activity for Europe, are reassuring. I do not think that slippage is possible, whatever the tension and pressure in the final phase of the Geneva negotiations. In any case, the EU is and will remain the main global importer of agricultural products, notably from Africa and other poor countries.
(FR)