Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-12-14-Speech-1-074"
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"en.20091214.15.1-074"2
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"Mr President, firstly I would like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to be here today to explain the current economic situation within the agricultural sector.
Producer organisations account today for 40% of the total output of fruit and vegetables. They can associate into economically stronger units also on a transitional basis, which is significant, as today’s crises do not recognise national borders.
In the 2007 reform, we provided incentives for producer organisations to do this. We also equipped them with new crisis management tools, like green harvesting or non-harvesting, which complement the traditional withdrawals.
We have also created a legal framework enabling fruit and vegetable producers to influence and stabilise the market, but there is a need for more bottom-up action, for which the Commission cannot take the responsibility. I therefore encourage the creation of producer organisations, and I think that Member States and farmers should take a look at the number of producer organisations you have in different Member States. It is not very wise if you have producer organisations competing against each other instead of competing against the retail sector.
Olive oil prices reached a record level four years ago due to unfavourable climate conditions. Since then, three consecutive satisfactory harvests and the economic crisis have led gradually to very low prices. For this reason, the Commission reactivated private storage aid earlier this year. We saw that the market reacted immediately and prices recovered steadily.
Despite the good harvest forecasts – the fourth in a row now – stocks at the beginning of the harvest stood at a low level. As far as we can see, consumption will recover.
To summarise, I see some timid signs of recovery. I agree that close monitoring of the situation is needed and that this will allow action where necessary.
This is a quick run-through of the short-term measures, but let me assure you that we are also looking into the medium- and long-term issues, in particular, at matters like the distribution of the value added in the food chain, and also how to deal with price volatility. I am sure we will come back to these important issues as well.
The financial and economic crisis has also had an impact on the agricultural sector. We have seen slowdown in demand, evolution of exchange rates, difficult access to credits – all of these have had an impact on the prices for agricultural products and also on farm income.
Official estimates of agricultural income will only be available at the end of this week, but we can already expect that the income will show a significant drop in 2009 compared to the previous year, given the relative development in the cost of production and the agricultural market prices.
After the initial fall that we saw in autumn 2008, this renewed drop in agricultural income can be expected to more than write off the exceptional income increases generated by the hikes that we saw in agricultural products starting in summer 2007 and then one year later.
Mr President, if you would allow me, I shall just go through some of the different sectors. First of all, cereals. We saw in 2008 a significant drop in prices, mainly because of a good harvest. However, we have seen that prices over recent months have increased specifically for wheat and corn or maize. In the light of these developments, it would not be appropriate at this moment to take exceptional measures, such as opening an intervention tender for maize, nor to intervene with export refunds.
The situation is slightly different for feed barley, with reduced exports and low domestic prices, but intervention – as you know – has just been opened, and this should help the feed-grain markets.
In the pigmeat sector, the situation is still fragile. The economic crisis hit it at a time when it had not fully recovered from the difficulties experienced back in 2007. Prices this year are lower than last year, but at the same time – and sometimes we have to look at it from the positive side – we can see that feed prices are much more stable than back in 2007 and 2008. Though exports are below the 2008 level, we expect them still to be much higher than in 2007.
All in all, I do not see sufficient justification for introducing an additional market instrument at the moment, but I can assure you that we are monitoring this situation very carefully.
As regards fruit and vegetables, the economic crisis has led to lower domestic consumption, and also we have seen a certain decrease in some export markets. This has affected the fruit and vegetable prices that producers obtained. However, given the characteristics of the sector, we decided in the last reform on fruit and vegetables that the way to tackle the challenges faced by the sector is to make producer organisations more attractive and also make them responsible for crisis management."@en1
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