Encounter with a knowledgeable extra-terrestrial. I was recently visited by a learned alien from a distant planet (he didn't say which), who wished to find out how we Earthlings face up to the environmental and food threats that are compromising humanity's very survival. He seemed to know a great deal about our situation. He knew that, without rapid and radical intervention, our current system of development would quite simply collapse in less than a century. The plant and organic cover that fertilises the top soil (which is no more than a few centimetres deep and which will take a thousand years to regenerate) is being gradually destroyed. At the same time, an insouciant demographic policy means the human population is multiplying. He knew that humanity has international organisations responsible for directing economic development and trade, and wished to more about what they were preparing to do in order to safeguard and manage world agricultural activity, the fundamental element for addressing the situation. Somewhat embarrassed, I had to answer that, for now, just one objective seems clear and broadly shared within the relevant organisation: that of forcing a territory, that covers around 5-6% of the land mass and which represents about the same proportion of world population (the territory called the European Union), to open up its borders to the agricultural production of the whole world. Upon this he remarked: "They must be very hungry and very poor, those poor Europeans!"

Not at all, I felt compelled to reply, they suffer more from overfeeding than form underfeeding.

Well then, I suppose they are not able to produce what it takes to feed them all.

Far from it, they even export their produce, and each year they give several millions of tonnes of corn to the poorer countries. And they are already the main world importers of agricultural products.

Then why do they have to import what they do not need and which, on the contrary, would be harmful to them, while, elsewhere, there are billions of people with not enough to eat?

The only reason seems to be that these Europeans are solvent - they can pay.

But all the traders in the world will take advantage of this stroke of good luck to try to get rich to the detriment of the under-nourished populations, and there will no longer be any agricultural production in the European Union.

This is quite foreseeable. And yet, farm production in Europe is indispensable if one wants this little part of the world to conserve its nature (or what remains of it), its environment, its traditions, and its landscapes, and to contribute to fighting famine elsewhere.

At least, the less prosperous and under-nourished countries will gain from this operation.

Not at all, one can easily prove that, by producing for export, the poorest countries will be less and less able to feed their populations and more and more dependent upon other countries.

Then what is the reasoning behind this policy? No point looking for one, I had to answer slightly embarrassed. There is none, apart from commercial interests, prejudice and misinformation.

Trade expansion ranks sixth. The more discerning reader will perhaps have understood that my meeting with a learned alien is not historically proven. In the past, we would have called it an "apology", to demonstrate that the new idea of agriculture and of agricultural trade that Europe has progressively developed and that it is seeking to introduce into international circles, has still to be perfected and consolidated. But don't get us wrong: what Pascal Lamy and Franz Fischler have already done is sensational. They have brought out the fundamental notions - multifunctional nature of agriculture, necessity to take non-commercial concerns into account - from the limited circle of European positions, speaking up when and where it was needed: Mr Lamy in Geneva, Mr Fischler at the ministerial meeting of the Cairns Group. The new conception is slowly making its way in the world. There will no longer be international "agricultural" negotiations aimed simply at expanding trade and neglecting the environmental and social and other considerations and demands. But an extra effort is still needed in order to complete this "revolution in thinking" that takes into account world realities and the true priorities: - those of saving the Earth from disaster and combating famine and under-nourishment. The aim must be for every people or regional entity to be able to cover its essential food needs. This means that the expansion of agricultural trade must be subject to priority objectives: food autonomy; nature conservation; food safety and quality; the safeguarding of traditions, landscapes and ways of life; as well as the viability of the rural economy. If such is the order of priorities, the calculation is easily made: trade expansion comes in sixth position. It is a valid objective, after the other five.

Single crop farming, monotonous landscapes… This is why I consider as positive the reticence and opposition that the European Commission's initiative has encountered, including all the farm produce in the total opening of EU borders to the poorest countries of the world. To put it clearly: if this effort were effectively beneficial to the countries concerned, then Europe should agree to it. But, it is plainly not in line with the above-mentioned priorities. The poorest and under-nourished countries must be encouraged (and helped) to produce for their own populations, not for export. The total opening of the European market encourages them to have a one-crop economy, to the benefit not of the peoples but of their leaders, traders (including European) and multinational companies. Single crop farming for export has been handed down from the colonial era. It wreaked havoc on subsistence farming which existed before and which these countries needed.

Without going as far back as the colonial era, we give herewith a statement by a farmer of the district of Mbeere in Kenya, published by the French daily Le Soir: "In the past, each family had a loft for storing the harvest and a small herd of farm animals for the family's food. All this disappeared with the introduction of tobacco as a paying crop. The farmers gave up subsistence farming because tobacco brought in more money. The grain reserves were abandoned and the animals also. All you see now is a landscape of tobacco drying chimneys. But, after the liberalisation of the tobacco market, the income derived from this fell sharply. Now, the villages are lacking in everything although the harvests are good. Money from tobacco is no longer enough to buy essential foodstuffs. As the food-producing crops have disappeared, the crop-growing communities are now struck by famine".

The association that each year organises, in Belgium, the Operation 11.11.11 for financing projects to fight against hunger, devoted the operation for the year 2000 to initiatives against export farming. It explains: "thousands of cultivated acres are reserved not for the local population but for export produce". Single crop farming, with its monotonous landscapes, destroys biodiversity, makes poor countries totally dependent on imports or international charity handouts, and boosts trade without any lasting advantages for the local farmers whose interests are totally neglected. The millions of tonnes of manioc imported by the EU for animal feed have meant that the farmers in Thailand have had to use 80% of their water resources for this crop, to the detriment of the crops they need for their own survival. The fact that the above examples concern countries which are not on the list of poorest countries makes little change to the substance of the argument.

Money? It's not a question of money. But if the initiative recommended by Mr Lamy is not beneficial to the poor countries, what remains? It is harmful to the interests of the other developing countries (which lose their "preferences" on the European market and which have not failed to make heated protest), and is a disaster for European rice and beetroot production. Of course, the Commission's services have analysed the foreseeable effects of the project, but how? By assessing what the possible increase in imports could cost the European budget. And yet that is not the question. It is not a matter of calculating how much money should be paid to EU rice producers, to make up for their "loss of income", but of knowing whether Europe will still be able to produce its traditional rice, indispensable for the ecological balance of certain wetlands (and possibly to give a fresh boost to the economy in the Camargue). The money in question, instead of being paid to European farmers so that they do not produce, should be given to the poor and hungry countries so that they can develop their subsistence farming. The assessment solely in terms of cost is one of the diseases that Euro-redtape is prone to. At the time of evaluating the possible repercussions of the opening up of the borders to farm products from Brazil and Argentina, the experts had calculated what indemnities should be paid for loss of production in meat, fruit, sugar, etc. in Europe. And it is on the basis of such calculations that the EU has pledged to make a free trade area with Mercosur.

Has Europe lost its memory? It looks as if Europe has no memory. The forecasts on the effects of measures for opening up access in the farming sector are always wrong, as international trade adjusts and, as soon as there is the smallest gap, rushes in. Forgotten is the traumatic experience of the sudden multiplication in rice imports caused by OCT/ACO accumulation of origin, which was destroying rice growing in Europe and forced the EU to hurriedly take a step backward. Forgotten the disaster caused by liberalised imports of soya, which almost destroyed pasture farming, fodder crops, clover and other high protein crops. At the same time it is prohibited for the EU to develop its own soya production through aid schemes. Forgotten too are the tough negotiations with Thailand so that it would limit its exports of cassava. And who would ban the less developed countries that produce sugar from unloading all their production on the European market, at the cost of causing a shortage for themselves?

The new conception of agriculture involves revision not only of trade rules but also of European agricultural policy. We shall speak of this last aspect tomorrow. (F.R.)