The EU’s reformed Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) must include strong food market regulations to protect the environment and farmers’ welfare, according to a group of farmers’, development, and environmental organisations including Friends of the Earth Europe.
In the last decade, farmers have been hit by a number of crises where prices for their products plummeted. Milk farmers suffered plunging prices three times in the last ten years – and falling beef and pork prices have devastated small beef and pork producers.
This crises are the outcome of a farming policy without any meaningful market regulations.
A new version of the CAP is expected to be agreed in the first half of 2021 under the Portuguese presidency of the EU Council. One important component of the policy is the Common Market Organisation (CMO) – a set of tools which have the potential to control agricultural markets in a way that is sustainable for the environment and just for farmers in the EU and beyond.
In a letter sent to the presidency, as well as key decision-makers in the EU Commission and Parliament, the organisations call for strong action to be taken in five key areas of the CMO:
- Reducing harmful overproduction in agriculture to prevent waste of finite resources, keep prices stable for farmers, and stop flooding non-EU markets with cheap exports.
- Assuring imports always meet EU standards to uphold plant protection and animal welfare standards, prevent EU farmers from being undercut by unfair competition, and avoid moving environmentally-harmful production to areas outside the EU.
- Introducing and improving monitoring and management tools to ensure standardisation and good implementation of the overall policy.
- Including the prevention of market disturbances to prevent crises of over- and under-supply and their effects both within and outside the EU.
- Ensuring more detailed and better information to improve transparency, allowing for better understanding of environmental impacts and effective preparation for possible surpluses.
The organisations conclude: “In light of the manifold challenges, which we urgently need to tackle, an appropriate legal CMO framework is the only way to avoid recurring crises and to bring long-term stability to the EU agricultural sector. (…) It is time to act and deliver.”
The signatory organisations are the European umbrella organisations of farmers European Milk Board and European Coordination Via Campesina, the environmental and organic farming organisations Friends of the Earth Europe and IFOAM as well as the development organisations Oxfam Solidariteit, SOS Faim and Vétérinaires sans frontières.
