Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-05-16-Speech-3-330"
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"en.20010516.11.3-330"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I wish to begin by offering my sincere congratulations to the European Court of Auditors, whose report on olive oil has made another major contribution to the debate on the effectiveness of the system of common organisation of the markets under which the common agricultural policy still operates. My first thanks go to the Commission, which spared no effort during the drafting of this report to make themselves available, to answer the questions put to them and to explain their decisions. I also wish to thank our Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, the draftsman of the opinion on this report, Vincenzo Lavarra and the rapporteur on the olive oil sector, Mr Jové Peres. My sincere thanks go to them for their contributions and for the way in which they cooperated so willingly with me. I wish to make very special mention of the excellent study on the environmental impact of the common organisation of the market in olive oil, produced for the Commission’s Directorate-General for the Environment by accredited institutions for agro-environmental analysis, from which I shall quote frequently in this speech.
The COM in olive oil is based on aid for production. In other words, it encourages higher productivity as a means of increasing farmers’ incomes. The average production of an olive grove varies between 200 kg and 500 kg per hectare per year for traditional olive groves in poorer areas and between around 8 and 10 tonnes per hectare per year in the more intensively cultivated groves with the best soil. Since it is possible, then, to increase the productivity of olive groves by 10 or even 20 times, a policy geared towards increasing the quantity produced has inevitably led to traditional olive groves and the most difficult land to cultivate being abandoned and has led to the intensification of production on more fertile land.
Traditional plantations have a low density of trees, which are generally old – trees that are centuries old are common – also contain arable crops or grazing land for sheep or goats, are frequently planted in terraces and are very labour intensive. The value of olive trees for heritage and for the landscape in terms of protecting land from floods and landslides or in terms of increasing biodiversity is incalculable. The study to which I just referred counted 120 plant species, 70 species of vertebrates and 160 species of invertebrates in traditional olive groves in the province of Cordoba in Andalusia. Ancient olive groves and trees play a particularly important role in preserving many species of birds. The value of subsidies for production is too low in this area and traditional olive groves are being abandoned throughout the Mediterranean, with the inevitable damaging consequences for the environment and for rural development.
Modern intensive plantations have a high density of low-yield trees, which are chopped down after a few years. These plantations use copious amounts of water for irrigation, up to 350 kg of fertiliser per hectare and pesticides and herbicides to clear the soil of vegetation. These plantations do not use terraces, which often creates slopes of more than 12%. It is estimated that modern olive groves in Andalusia have caused erosion of 80 tonnes per hectare, whereas more than 50 tonnes of erosion per hectare is considered to be an extremely serious level.
The around 1 million new intensive plantations in Andalusia are therefore causing erosion at a rate of 80 million tonnes of soil per year, making this one of the main factors for desertification in the southern Iberian Peninsula. Although fewer studies have been made of the problem in these areas, it also affects huge swathes of the Peloponnese, Crete, the Aegean islands and Tuscany. In areas such as Liguria and in many parts of Portugal, erosion is caused more by traditional olive groves being abandoned than by the establishment of modern groves.
The current system of production-related aid is not only stimulating the human and environmental desertification of the southern part of our continent, but is also making the work of those who adulterate olive oil easier, enabling them to cheat the Community budget, cheat consumers of their right to buy a natural, high-quality product, and cheat the farmers. The level of fraud and irregularities uncovered by this Court of Auditors report on the olive oil sector is far too high. It is true that there is every indication that the only reason for more fraud being discovered in olive oil than in milk is that there are tighter controls, not because there is any greater propensity to commit fraud in that sector. The European institutions must make the fight against the adulteration of food in areas such as meat, milk, wine and olive oil absolute political priorities, which will inevitably mean overhauling the way in which the CAP operates. Preserving and improving the environment and farmers’ incomes is the prime objective of the agricultural chapter of the Treaty. Our current approach, however, is proving of greater benefit to the agro-industrial conglomerates than to agriculture. It is causing the desertification of the poorest rural areas, is having a damaging effect on the environment and makes the sale of bogus products easier. We therefore need to abandon the old COM system of providing incentives for productivity and to create a new CAP that focuses on protecting farmers’ incomes, the rural world, quality and the environment."@en1
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