Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-03-26-Speech-4-014"

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"Madam President, Commissioner, the food aid programme is essential today. As the rapporteur has written, in 2006 in the EU-25 alone 43 million people were undernourished and 79 million were threatened with poverty, which is more than 20% of the total population of the EU. The programme has helped one in six of the people in need. So the problem is serious, and the phenomenon of poverty has worsened further following recent enlargements of the EU. The statistics show that the programme only alleviates the problem of malnutrition but is not eliminating it. It is a programme which treats the effects but does not eliminate the causes. Is it not paradoxical that it is the inhabitants of country areas who are threatened by poverty and malnutrition? Those who should be producing food are in need of food aid, but rather than this being their fault, it is the effect of policy. It is the effect of unsound agricultural policy, which causes the bankruptcy of family smallholdings and increases the number of people who need food aid. The sustainable European Model of Agriculture of 1997 is a propaganda myth. Family smallholdings were to be a key element in the model, but in fact it is the other way round. It is these farms which are excluded, although they make up at least 95% of all farms in the European Union. Is it not paradoxical that we give most of the money in agriculture to those whose production is expensive? To large animal farms which damage the environment, while farms which produce cheaply receive symbolic support? EU trade policy exposes us to sudden price rises, and competition policy has led to a monopoly on sales and to overpricing. It is high time that these policies were changed. It is these policies which have made food expensive, and which are the reason why the number of poor and undernourished citizens of the EU is growing."@en1
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