Agriculture’s prolonged identity crisis

Date: 02/06/05

European agriculture is undergoing a prolonged identity crisis which has profound consequences for the identity of the European Union. The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has been entrenched in the heart of the EU since the Treaty of Rome of 1957 and still consumes 45% of the EU budget.

The identity of European farming is very much bound up with the identity of Europe itself. Assumptions about Europe's landscape and its rural way of life are closely tied up with European culture.

The EU's farming lobby has long enjoyed privileged political leverage. Although the importance of the EU's farmers has been declining, the agricultural lobby is still a powerful political force, not just in France, but also in most of the old member states and in several of the new.

But plainly the privileged conditions that farmers enjoyed for thirty-plus years and the assumptions on which the CAP was founded no longer apply. Food is plentiful and can be obtained not just from Europe but from around the world. The logic of paying EU farmers to produce food no longer applies: indeed the link between what farmers are paid and what they produce is now being severed, or 'decoupled'.

The assumption of favouring EU farmers over producers elsewhere in the world no longer seems such a self-evident virtue. It conflicts with other EU policies, such as those on development and foreign policy. When world market prices are often much lower than those for EU-produced commodities, it flies in the face of economic logic.

In addition, EU farming has been battered in recent years by a series of scandals and scares over human and animal health. Outbreaks of mad cow disease, dioxin contamination, foot-and-mouth disease and classical swine fever have called into question Europe's industrial methods of agricultural production.

Distance and distrust between agro-industrial producers and consumers are also visible in the controversies over genetically modified crops.

In 2003, the existing 15 EU states agreed on a further round of CAP reform ahead of enlargement. The implementation of those reforms is still going on.

In addition, the EU has to realign its farm policy to the context of international trade, to promises made or being made in World Trade Organization negotiations.

The upshot is that the CAP is in a state of flux. The notion of a European model of agriculture is being modified and it is not yet clear what model or models might emerge.

The Commission is pinning a great deal on its plans for rural development.

Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel speaks of rural development money giving "a shot in the arm" to rural communities.

She envisages "a new and younger agriculture focusing on speciality and quality products, linking up with agricultural and commercial schools, using the internet to penetrate the market for direct delivery and welcoming the urban dweller in their thriving rural environment for rest and adventure".

The next few months could decide whether European farmers are ready to embrace Fischer Boel's vision.

Article takes a look at the present state of European agriculture and the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Author argues that while the CAP is in a state of flux itself, the notion of a European model of agriculture is being modified and it is not yet clear what model or models might emerge.

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