Farming Politics Get Critical

Written by Andrew Duff MEP and published in Eastern Daily Press on Thu 18th Jan 2001

The pace of change, as any radical politician will tell you, can be agonisingly slow. Yet sometimes remarkable things happen overnight. January 2001 might be remembered as the moment when the most protected farm industry in Europe collapsed. The sacking of the German agriculture minister and the deconstruction of his ministry is just what was needed.

It is unfortunate that it took the outbreak of BSE in Germany, just as it took the epidemic of swine fever in the Netherlands, to trigger such reform. But now, at least, it will be the principles of ecology that drive German rural policy. The European Union's environmental protection and countryside management policies should at last take precedence over the endless supply of subsidised food that nobody wants. From now on food safety and animal welfare will be at the top of the agenda in Berlin as they are already in Brussels. Similar shock-waves are being felt in Rome, Paris and Madrid. With this cultural revolution in national farming regimes, it should be possible to save the Common Agricultural Policy from the bankruptcy towards which it was surely headed. This is great news for East Anglia.

Would that our own Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food were to suffer such a radical shock to the system. MAFF's main functions are to manage European Union farm policy in England and to be an effective voice for British agriculture in Brussels. Regardless of the hapless cabinet minister in charge, it does neither job well. It is a highly bureaucratic and centralised ministry: if it makes a mistake, it's a big one. It failed to react quickly and effectively to the food health alerts in the 1980s. By continuing to export live cattle and infected animal feed even though their consumption was banned in Britain, MAFF was directly responsible for the spread of BSE around the continent. The Min. of Ag. is not helping to develop regional autonomy for the East of England; its work is poorly coordinated with other departments of state; and it is failing to exploit all the funds that are available from Brussels for rural activities outside the food sector. British officialdom is a brake on moving towards organic and non-intensive farming methods at home, thereby compounding the error of the UK Labour government which has declined to force the pace of CAP reform at the EU level.

More reform means more Europe

I meet many people who criticise the European Union for one reason or another, fairly or not. But very few of these critics are farmers, for whom the CAP shapes their lives and landscape.

It would be a great mistake to think that Europe can ever do without the Common Agricultural Policy. Nobody who knows a thing or two about British farming could honestly believe that BSE would have been exposed here without pressure from the EU - and, specifically, from the special committee of inquiry set up by the European Parliament. We need the CAP in order to ensure fair trading conditions, and to see that animals are treated well, that land is not polluted and food is not poisoned. These difficult objectives will be even more difficult to achieve in the candidate countries of Eastern Europe who wish to join the EU.

In fact, it is idle to imagine, as both Labour and Tory British governments tend to do, that you can have CAP reform without more Europe. Too often in the past, populist fears about national sovereignty have got in the way of strong EU regulation. Farmers' incomes have taken precedence over consumer safety, and instead of strengthening and harmonising animal testing across Europe, official advice has been to boycott foreign produce.

I know no Norfolk farmer who would be happy with an unreformed or weakened CAP. Nor do I meet many Norfolk landowners who can afford to undertake the environmental protection schemes that are so badly needed without EU funding. Farmers need EU incentives to adopt less intensive practices to improve food quality, to manage the Norfolk countryside and to protect wildlife habitats. Hunting seasons, especially for birds, need to be more strictly controlled by the Union across Europe. The high economic costs of environmental projects in East Anglia need to be shared out by the Union with other regions.

Liberal Democrats in Britain and Europe are in the forefront of the battle to create a cleaner, greener Europe - a battle that can only be won by a much closer alliance between government at the regional and European Union level. Whitehall should watch out.