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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Farming policy: an end to French hypocrisy?
  • Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2009 13:23:15 -0700


Farming policy: an end to French hypocrisy?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/farming-policy-an-end-to-fren

ch-hypocrisy-1630327.html
By John Lichfield in Paris
Tuesday, 24 February 2009

Sarkozy makes historic move to divert European subsidies from rich cereal
ranches to small traditional farms

REUTERS

After 46 years of shovelling farm subsidies to its richer, more polluting
farmers, France yesterday took a historic step towards a greener and fairer
European agriculture policy.

Paris announced that from next year it would confiscate over 20 per cent of
the billions of euros of European taxpayers’ money paid to its ranch-like
cereals farms and divert the cash to hill farmers, grazing land, shepherds
and organic agriculture.

The announcement brings to an end almost half-a-century of official
hypocrisy in which French governments have talked about protecting
“family farms” and “quality food” but allowed the bulk of European
largesse to flow to chemical-assisted, hedge-free, cereals-ranching in
northern, central and eastern France.

Although Brussels first encouraged governments to “rob” rich farmers to
subsidise small, traditional farms four years ago, Paris remained the only
European government to insist that large cereals farms should receive their
full, traditional EU payments. The Agriculture Minister, Michel Barnier,
announced yesterday that this policy would end from next year.

The largest French cereals farms – which can receive up to ¤800,000
(£700,000) in annual subsidies – will lose 20 per cent of their EU
cash. Others will be “taxed” at a lower rate. Overall, a total of
¤1,400m a year will be transferred from big farms to traditional farms
and schemes to promote biodiversity.

The money will be used, above all, to help struggling beef, sheep and goat
farmers and to encourage the slowly gathering movement towards “bio” or
organic agriculture in France.

President Nicolas Sarkozy believes this historic shift in French attitudes
is essential to preserve what remains of traditional farming communities in
the Alps and in central, western and southern France. His government also
recognises that a change from an increasingly indefensible policy of “big
farmers first” is essential if the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is to
survive. “This is the price we must pay to defend the CAP,” M. Barnier
said.

A radical re-examination of the CAP is due in four years. President Sarkozy
recognises that he can no longer do what President Jacques Chirac did:
defend the CAP as a shield for small, traditional farms and quality food
while the bulk of subsidies went to wheat, barley and rice ranches.

Under the present rules, the 10 largest French farms receive an average of
¤500,000 each. The smallest farms receive an average of ¤500 each.

Yesterday’s policy shift does not presage a weakening of French support
for the CAP. A cynical interpretation might be that France is preparing a
more logical and eco-friendly argument to hold on to the ¤10bn it
receives each year from the CAP budget.

Small farmers’ groups complained that the reforms did not go far enough.
Régis Hochart of the Confédération Paysanne said: “This is an
important advance but those with the highest revenues should still be
contributing more.”

On the other hand, the change in French attitudes does suggest that it may
be easier to rebuild the CAP in 2013: moving away from subsidies for mass
production of food and towards aid for small rural communities, traditional
livestock farming and organic agriculture.

While criticising the very existence of the CAP, successive British
government have also tended to defend the flow of payments to larger
cereals farms and have resisted the movement towards direct subsidies for
smaller, more “traditional” forms of agriculture.

Although France already has the fifth-largest acreage of non-chemical, or
organic farms in the EU, it lags behind other European countries in terms
of percentage of “bio” production. Only two per cent of French farm
land and vineyards is officially regarded as “organic”: i.e. free of
chemical fertilisers, herbicides and insecticides.

During a visit on Saturday to the Paris agricultural show, President
Nicolas Sarkozy announced that a wind of change was about to blow through
the French countryside.

“We have animal rearing farms which are suffering. We have hill areas
which are suffering,” he said. Farm subsidies must be reallocated to make
the payments “more equitable”, he said. “And because they are fairer,
they will be permanent.”





  • [Livingontheland] Farming policy: an end to French hypocrisy?, Tradingpost, 02/24/2009

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