Let's look ahead. This column has recently striven to indicate some of the positive elements from the financial crisis, such as the fact that it inexorably leads to the introduction of transparency and rules of conduct where there were practically none before. Why not try a similar exercise for the food crisis? The lives of millions of people are at stake and the urgent nature of this second crisis obviously needs to be tackled and the dramatic repercussions arising from it prevented: there are no positive aspects to the crisis at all. Besides the immediate obligation of taking action, we need to define the elements to get moving again and to create the conditions for getting rid of future risks. We have to turn our back on the behaviour of the past and set out a number of principles and orientations for the agriculture policies of the future. To participate modestly in this exercise, I will recall three principles. In a few cases, they now appear obvious, almost banal, but up until yesterday they were opposed or denied either out of ignorance or to prioritise selfish big trade interests - those of the large-scale distributors or indeed corruption. Here are the three principles, which in my opinion are priorities:
1. The essential aim of agriculture is to satisfy the food requirements of the local population. Trade interests come afterwards. Each people or group of people have the right to aim for food self-sufficiency.
2. The trade in agricultural and food products is well understood, opportune and useful but only in as far as other priority demands are met. In addition to local food requirements, these demands cover environmental balance, biodiversity, tradition and landscape.
3. Competitive prices cannot be the only criterion in agricultural trade. Product quality and safety is just as important, as is animal welfare. Rules applied for valid reasons to national production are completely ineffective if they are not applied to imported products (there are certain bodies to prevent protectionist abuses). A firm approach must also apply to controls on denomination of origin.
Europe is still not forthright enough. The EU should set an example in the application of simple principles. It is already partly doing so for certain aspects (such as food self-sufficiency) but reluctantly and with some misgivings, and without stating that it is by far the biggest importer of agricultural goods in the world, particularly those from developing countries, and that it will remain so. The EU is not refuting forcefully enough the misconception that competitiveness is the only essential criterion in agriculture. It does, nonetheless, have the sad experience of “mad cow” disease behind it, resulting from reducing costs in raising and breeding herbivores on meat-derived flour (when Plutarch already knew that this would upset bovine brain chemistry). Europe appears prepared to abandon its cultural heritage. Even yesterday I read an article by Maurice Blondet on the stupefying knowledge of Tuscan peasants about the secrets and mysteries of nature, but we prefer to imagine that the Tuscan miracle (and in other regions in Europe) came about purely by chance.
The common agricultural policy (CAP) has made a lot of mistakes. Many have then been rectified (and other corrections are now being made) but I believe that the only serious mistake was the export subsidies for sales to developing countries. Any subsidised competition in connection with these countries has to go. All the rest (price stability, strict rules on product quality and safety, the principle of an agricultural activity throughout the Community, protection against unfair competition) has to be maintained and in some cases strengthened in the interest of Europe and the rest of the world. Giving up producing one or other staple foodstuffs, which the EU is currently doing for sugar and which it is preparing to do for rice, is sheer recklessness.
Europe needs its bees. The affirmation that farming is a secondary activity because it only involves 2% of the EU population is false and completely stupid, even if this affirmation has been made by eminent political figures or clever economists or university lecturers. Without farming, the EU's territorial balance would be destroyed and with it biodiversity, natural landscapes, tradition and the ability to feed its population and take part in the world-war on hunger. Its bees are just as indispensable to Europe as its scholars and researchers.
(F.R.)