Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-01-19-Speech-4-018-000"
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"en.20120119.3.4-018-000"2
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"Madam President, I will be no exception in congratulating my colleague, José Bové, for this very timely and very powerful report. It pulls together a number of the interlocking and mutually reinforcing factors which are impacting on our food supply chain and making the lives of European and global farmers more difficult. Indeed, there are times when the economics of farming are not so much a science as more of a voodoo cult. It is amazing that anybody is actually in farming at all and that we have any food to eat.
The fact is that the increased concentration of market power downstream of farming, in processing industries, trade companies and supermarkets, and upstream of farming, in terms of increasing costs for fertilisers, energy, feed, seed, water, loans and land rent, is undermining the proper functioning of the food supply chain in Europe. Farmers are facing a squeeze between rising costs for input and low farm gate prices.
For those colleagues – usually those not present in these debates – who have suggested that the free market is working, I have some statistics from the Scottish Agricultural College report on power in agriculture – actual statistics on market concentration – showing that four companies worldwide account for 75-90%, by some measures, of global grain trade, seven companies control all fertiliser supply, five companies share 68% of the global agrochemical market, and three companies control almost 50% of the proprietary seeds market. If you add to that the supermarkets’ and processors’ power, it really is surprising that our farmers are in business at all. So to those who would say that the free market in agriculture is working – well, prima facie, no it is not.
We saw what happened – as other colleagues have mentioned – with the breakdown of the interbank lending market earlier in this economic crisis. It is the poorest who are hit hardest, and our citizens are very much in the frame for this. So I was delighted, Commissioner, to hear your fulsome presentation this morning, and I hope you will gather from this debate that this House is looking for more action from the Commission, not less. We are your ally in this and, if anything, we want to see more urgent activity from the Commission on the many issues raised in this report.
We want to see further action because this is not going to go away or get better. Quite the reverse – the market is concentrating further day by day in a world where we are increasingly seeing instability in energy prices, global instability and its political knock-on effects, and climate change making parts of the world wetter, parts of the world drier, and all of the world more climatically unstable. We are not going to see our food supply chain getting calmer.
We need to act on this urgently. CAP reform has never been more urgent and this report deserves to be absolutely fundamental in all our minds as we take forward the CAP reform project with you, Commissioner. We look forward to that effort."@en1
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