Read at : FT. com (Financial Times)
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/939ee094-148d-11dd-a741-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1
The rising cost of food
Europe’s CAP the ‘answer’ to food crisis
By Ben Hall in Paris
Africa and Latin America should adopt their own versions of Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy as a response to rising demand for food, according to Michel Barnier, France’s farm minister. While critics of the CAP prepare to use surging food prices and threats of shortages to seek freer trade in agriculture, Mr Barnier told the Financial Times that, on the contrary, the developing world should draw inspiration from Europe and form self-sufficient regional agricultural blocs funded with a redirection of development aid. Mr 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 said. “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. France wants to use its rotating presidency of the EU, which starts in July, to kick-start a debate about the future of the CAP after 2013, when the current funding regime runs out.
(continued)
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
