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| Michel Barnier, France’s farm minister |
Global Food Crisis:Africa and Latin America should adopt their own versions of agricultural protection along the lines of Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) as a response to rising demand for food, according to Michel Barnier, France’s farm minister. He wants to give greater control of agriculture to corrupt elites by arguing that farmers in poor countries should not produce cash crops for export.
France has been the biggest beneficiary of the CAP since its inception and Ireland has been the largest per capita recipient for most of the period since 1973.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told a major gathering of trade and development officials last week that wealthier nations need to rethink old-fashioned programmes of agricultural subsidies and asked: "If we cannot scrap these relics today, in an era of high prices, then when can we?"
Speaking in Accra, Ghana, at the opening of the twelfth UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Ban warned that neither the food crisis nor the chance that some regions may be poised for a slowdown should be used by governments as an excuse to turn towards protectionism.
France and Ireland have strong farming lobbies and Ireland will not become a net contributor to the EU budget until 2013 -40 years after joining the then European Economic Community in 1973. - - Ireland's 40-year bonanza of foreign aid from the European Union will amount to €41 billion by the time we become a net contributor in 2013
Last week, it was reported that European land prices had hit record levels and Ireland has some of the most expensive farmland in Europe. In addition, the Irish system of rezoning for development, creates an artificial scarcity of land in a country that is 4% urbanised and makes multi-millionaires of some farmers with land that has development potential.
Land acquisition accounts for 23% of the cost of roads projects in Ireland, but just 12% in England, 10% in Denmark, 9.4% in Greece and 1% in Iceland. A further 2% of the €18.5bn provided in the Government's Transport 21 for road building over the next decade will go to archaeologists.-- European land prices hit record on food price boom; Irish land 10 times value of land in Scotland ; Six times that of similar farmland in England
Instead of allowing developing world agriculture greater access to the markets of rich countries, Michel Barnier told the Financial Times that, the developing world should draw inspiration from Europe and form self-sufficient regional agricultural blocs funded with a redirection of development aid.
Barnier, a former French foreign minister, ex-EU commissioner and member of the governing centre-right UMP party, said he would not allow Europe’s system of subsidies and barriers to trade to take the blame for “disorder” surrounding the commodities spike in prices and associated unrest in some countries.
“What we are now witnessing in the world is the consequence of too much free-market liberalism,”he told the FT. “We can’t leave feeding people to the mercy of the market. We need a public policy, a means of intervention and stabilisation.
“I think [the CAP] is a good model. It is a policy that allows us to produce to feed ourselves. We pool our resources to support production. West Africa, East Africa, Latin America and the southern shore of the Mediterranean all need regional common agricultural policies.”
The EU should provide money and know-how to help these regions adopt their own CAPs, he added.
Barnier wants poorer countries to focus on feeding their populations and not produce cash crops for export.
Basically what he is advocating is that the political elites in developing countries should gain greater control of agriculture and farmers should be beholden to these often corrupt individuals in order that European farmers protect a system that is effectively a state welfare system. In effect take the hope of advance away farmers in poorer countries.
Barnier is also advocating a system where poor urban people in developing countries would be hit with higher prices as happens in the EU.
The CAP operates as a system of direct subsidy via the EU budget and an indirect tax on consumers through higher prices paid through high tariffs and restriction of trade.
So France wants further restrictions on agriculture imports into the EU at a cost to consumers - - in effect a stealth tax.
It can also be argued that Barnier's plan for self-sufficiency in Africa, would risk more famine as there is an absence of sophisticated irrigation systems that would be a counter to the regular periods of drought
So France's plan would simply leave more control in the hands of corrupt elites while killing off the opportunity for advancement in income for farmers through access to international markets.
It would be a reversion to a system akin to Soviet collectivist agriculture.
