Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-05-15-Speech-2-179"
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"en.20010515.8.2-179"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, limiting the number of bulls for which premiums are payable to ninety per farm, one of the points in the Commission’s seven-point plan, is unlikely to prove effective in matching beef production to demand in the European Union. It is universally accepted that, in view of the fall in beef consumption, cattle farming cannot be sustained at the accustomed level. But let me say, Commissioner, that the burden of this reduction must not be distributed unfairly to the detriment of particular regions.
If we want to speak about a new regime of premium entitlements, we cannot base such a regime on an absolute ceiling, as the Commission proposes, but on a solution that is reasonable for all farms, a point that Mr Sturdy has already made. Such a solution can only be based on the amount of available grassland or, perhaps better still, on the input of working hours, in other words on the number of farmhands employed in accordance with the laws and regulations – and let me stress that last proviso.
Incidentally, if you remember, we have held this discussion already. We held it when we were discussing the organisation of the market in beef and veal in the context of the debate on Agenda 2000. But when you write, Commissioner Fischler, in your reply to a letter from the Chairman of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development that there is only one derogation from the 90-head rule in the new
of the Federal Republic of Germany and that the reduction there ought now to result in structural change, you are missing the point that the number of persons employed in agriculture in those regions has fallen in the last ten years from 800 000 to 150 000. May I say to the Commission that this is quite enough structural change! Or, if I may resort to sarcasm, do you perhaps want to solve the beef problem at the expense of these new
in eastern Germany, thereby ensuring that the farms there will be forced to shut down? Why, in fact, can we not contemplate a tighter squeeze on premium payments on the basis of stocking density per hectare of forage area? You have provided for a reduction from 2 to 1.8 livestock units. But I should like to see a different system, one which would render the 90-head premium limit superfluous.
Just imagine it were left to the farmer’s discretion to decide how drastically he cut down the number of his cattle below the density threshold at which premiums became payable. For this, however, the farmer would have to receive an additional compensatory payment corresponding to the extent of the voluntary reduction. This could be called beef set-aside, by analogy with fruit and vegetable production, because we spend considerable amounts on set-aside premiums for non-production in those domains too. If this system were to result in a lower level of beef production, it would be right and proper for us to reward those farmers who trim the size of their herds in such a natural way instead of producing surpluses which cannot be marketed and may even have to be destroyed.
Perhaps, Commissioner, you could take to this idea. Your conversion need not be immediate!"@en1
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