Catchy title, eh? (!)
�The most interesting and important result of the CAP Reform to date has been that the public consultation and communication showed that people want agriculture to deliver on public goods, people want good quality food produced in a manner which does not compromise the environment.�
That's according to Christopher Stopes, current President of IFOAM, the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements.
He points out that there is some recognition of this fact at European Commission level. Their recent communication The CAP towards 2020, he states, �recognises the special quality organic farm products offer to consumers, and stresses the need to further strengthen the organic quality scheme as a policy tool�.
�If implemented in an ambitious way, this will be an asset for the future of the CAP, as organic
farming does not only provide consumers with high-quality food, but is also a comprehensive approach to deliver solutions for the challenges the Commission has so clearly lined out, including climate change, biodiversity loss, depletion of natural resources such as soil, water and nutrients, while also promoting enhanced animal welfare standards.�
Stopes was in Ireland recently, speaking in Tullamore at the rescheduled IOFGA AGM. He expanded upon these and other related points as keynote speaker at the event.
Pointing out the basic inconsistencies and failings of agriculture and food policies, he described a recent meeting with a financier who �made �150 million in speculation on grain in January this year�.
Who said there was no money in farming?
Meanwhile, 150 million more people have been pushed into hunger in the last three years than were previously.
In essence, the deregulation of markets has allowed food to be speculated upon and hoarded, even while people starve. Indeed, bumper crops in African countries can ironically and tragically lead to famine in the very country that produces the crop, through market reactions to said crop.
Exposing a lack of joined up thinking, Stopes also noted that food-related ill-health spending is the equivalent of �1/3 of the CAP budget anyway.�
Noting a kind of environmental future-proofing in the functioning of organic farms, he made an analogy: because hedges on farms allow for rotations, reduce parasites levels and increase biodiversity, Stopes describes organic farmers as �the real hedge fund managers�
Industry, he pointed out, has always been slow to warn about its own negative effects: �where have the warnings been from industry? The manufacturers didn't take it upon themselves to tell us. They stood by while the Rachael Carsons of the world actually said something�.
Comparing the organic farming and food sectors in the UK and Ireland, he pointed out that state support is stronger here than in the UK.
�In Harvest 2020, it states that organic supports should continue � organic is not even mentioned in the UK's equivalent document�
Bord Bia, he suggested, are far more supportive of organic food than their UK equivalents, the Food Standards Authority.
And the UK's DEFRA, unlike the Irish Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, do not organise a delegation to the trade show BioFach.
He hopes, however, for something of a leap of faith from organic being seen as a quality marker, as it is described in the recent CAP document, towards it being seen as a multifunctional deliverer of stated public policy goals.
While expanding Pillar 2 of the CAP offers the most hope for developing the organic sector, there are issues.
Not only does Pillar 2 receive less financial support from the overall CAP budget, �the big problem is that Pillar 2 requires co-financing by member states�. So there is �patchy support for organic policy� across the EU 27 as a result, he suggested.
The 'elephant in the living room', as it were, is the greening of Pillar 1. Traditional the domain of production only, he suggested that the greening of Pillar 1 would tie a far more significant number of public policy aims together.
For more, see IFOAM
