First Forum for the Future of Agriculture – 27 March 2008

 

Panel: What Does Europe Need from Agriculture?

 

Perspective from Rural Development

 

By Corrado Pirzio-Biroli – RISE Foundation

 

 

As Franz Fischler said, we are facing the most serious world food crisis since World War II. The food imbalance that has caused top prices is structural. It is a clear sign of market failure as well as of institutional failure. If social unrest is to be reined in and world hunger kept in check, let alone reduced, FAO Director General Jacques Diouf’s call for long term solutions must be heed.

 

This sorry state of affairs can hopefully help enhance official and public attention also to rural development and its relevance, not just for food production, but also for greenhouse gas emissions/carbon sequestration, water management, energy use, and environmental degradation, and climate change, all of which impact on food prospects.

 

The future of agriculture is affected by, and has an impact on all of those factors. So is the future of rural development, which currently is the Cinderella of the CAP. Rural development depends on agriculture, and is actually part of it, notably as the site of the services farmers provide. But it also means much more than agriculture. Conversely the future of agriculture depends on a living countryside. Both are dependent on the environment and the other way round. The environment in turn is affected by population pressure and human behaviour.

 

World population is expected to grow by 80 million annually, adding three billion people by 2050. Mega and other cities keep mushrooming and expanding. Rural areas overall keep loosing population, land as well as political influence and relevance. Most of them face the risk of growing public neglect, increasing rural-urban income gaps and desertification.

 

In this connection, the negative trends are mind-boggling. An estimated 40,000 ha of land are needed for basic living space for every 1 million people added. This adds up to a total of 3.2m hectares a year. Cropland is lost to urbanization. At the same time, farm land is actually diminishing fast and suffering substantial losses of topsoil. It has been calculated that the addition of some 80 million people every year claims well over 3 million hectares for housing, roads, highways and parking lots (Lester Brown). Deserts are expanding at the expense of mostly cropland and grassland with an annual loss of 700,000 hectares in China and Nigeria alone. Just to maintain its existence, the average city of one million inhabitants requires more than 1.8 million kg of food, over 600,000 tons of fresh water, and 9,500 tons of fuel every 24 hours, most of which has to be transported over long distances. The costs of the population flight from rural to urban areas cannot be ignored.

 

Moreover, a lot of the world’s top soil is lost every year. American farms alone lose more than four billion tons of topsoil annually, much of it from high-tech farm practices such as monoculture, which make crops more vulnerable to pests. The resulting greater use of pesticides destroys fertility-maintaining organisms in the soil and weakens their structure. Incidentally, second-generation biofuels can aggravate soil structure by using plant waste for other purposes.

 

Without sustainable, more decisive action regarding rural development, rural areas risk to be given back to nature instead of being preserved and developed for people. Unfortunately, relevant current policies and plans are all weak and short-term and risk, if continued, to jeopardize the future of the countryside.

 

I advocate a hands-on approach, rejecting the notion that the market will automatically take care of restoring balance. It always does of course, but at what price and with what human, social and environmental costs? I also question the belief that technology alone will continue to allow the increases of productivity necessary to feed an ever increasing population or to counteract environmental degradation. While with current consumption patterns there are no limits to growth in food demand, there are limits to growth in food supply. In this connection, water shortages are more worrying than energy supplies. Lack of energy savings has led greenhouse gas emissions to hopelessly overtake the capacity for carbon sequestration. Technology has obviously lagged accordingly on both accounts.

 

Our policy answers must take into account, not just the requirements of Europe’s rural areas, but factor in also interests and needs of the developing countries, the majority of whom are net importers of food, catching up with western consumption patterns, and loosing agricultural land and soil. What happens with their rural areas and with their soils and forests will have an even greater impact on the world than what happens with ours. But it is up to the industrialized countries, which have the necessary means, to lead by example.

 

There are many requirements for injecting greater dynamism in rural areas, notably investments, technology and CAP reform.

 

Investments

Firstly, we must invest more in food production. Secondly, we also need to invest more in rural infrastructure, SME and services in order to make the rural environment and country living more attractive. Thirdly, and most important, we need to boost investments in technology, in particular in soil and water protection, crop protection, biotechnology, decentralized energy supply and mechanization, which can help limit risks of food shortages and environmental degradation.

 

Technology can indeed help to increase sustainable food production, but up to a point. Existing technology should not be dropped too easily without proper judgment as to whether the pros outweigh the cons. Incidentally; I doubt the European Commission has fully analyzed the impact of its recent proposal on plant protection products.

 

The greatest contribution can be expected from biotechnology, provided public opinion is prepared to accept it. In the context of climate change with rising temperatures and water scarcities, GMOs are actually the only hope we have to feed the world sustainably, if and as they allow to economically produce more food with higher temperatures and less water, and agro-fuels without competing with food production or degrading the soil. Biotech is thus a priority for investments, deeper impact assessments, public information and awareness.

 

Further research is also needed on the best ways and means stemming the peoples’ flight from rural towards urban areas. The RISE foundation is planning to do just that with the support of the Italian Government in order to produce a report in view of the 2 nd Forum on the future of Agriculture next year.

 

Step-by-Step CAP Reform

Our challenge in Europe is to continue to adapt EU agricultural policy in order to preserve our capacity to sustainably produce enough food for the world, enhance the attractiveness of our countryside, and open our market further.

 

Europe must continue to “lead by example” with its step-by-step CAP reform process, just as all other countries need to do with their own agricultural policies, keeping in mind that farmers need sufficient regulatory stability to plan their activities, that agricultural farm income support must continue, as almost everywhere else, with the appropriate adjustments. Such support has gone down recently.

 

In particular EU rural development support has already lost some €40 billion over 2007-2013 compared to 2000-2006 and may suffer further reductions affecting the services that farmers provide to society, which lack market compensation. The European Council has thereby actually failed to appreciate that overexploitation of natural resources, together with urbanization and globalization have become the most serious challenges to the physical integrity of the countryside, and its way of life and that something has to be done about it.

 

There is little doubt that the CAP needs rebalancing support in favour of rural development. The Council has failed to follow the Commission on this. It had even had difficulties to underline the role of rural development within the Lisbon strategy. Those who understand the rural predicament because they live with it have little power, whereas those who have the power act as if unaware.

 

Philanthropy

As public funds will be scarce, private investment and philanthropy should attach greater interest to rural development. This is the very reason why the ELO, the FCS together with Franz Fischler created the RISE Foundation that I represent here. In this context, our Chairman for the day Franz Fischler, the ELO, the FCS and myself have issued a Charter for Rural Conservation and Renewal creating a new public utility instrument, the Rural Investment Support for Europe - in short RISE Foundation.

 

The RISE Foundation is a new initiative. It is the only pan European independent foundation devoted to sustainable rural development. It covers all aspects of conservation and development of the rural world across the entire European Union. It is unique. It is independent and self-supporting. It fosters bottom-up private investment in rural areas. It intends to mobilize resources and develop financial vehicles to conserve and renew the countryside. The first RISE-supporting financial vehicle being envisaged is a Rural Investment Fund.

 

Thank you.

 

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See the web-site : www.risefoundation.eu