Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-09-25-Speech-2-450"
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"en.20070925.36.2-450"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, yes, Parliament can move very quickly. Of course, the thought that Parliament could be blamed for the fact that farmers would not know what to plant on their land this year did concentrate our minds quite a lot, so we were delighted to work with you to be able to get to this firm decision. I also compliment my own committee, the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, on its unanimous decision.
The points I would like to raise really is, what a difference a year makes! Twelve months ago we were talking about EUR 90/tonne for wheat. Now we are talking about EUR 250-270, so we are talking three times the price. Now is the time, therefore, to look seriously at bringing set-aside down to 0%. I would even go further back than that. When you think that for 20 odd years now in Europe we have been talking about food surpluses, farmers are not really needed, that we have to turn the land over to something else and that food security does not really matter. All of a sudden food security does matter.
I think there is a moral argument here as well. When the world has plenty of food, then perhaps Europe does not need altogether to do its share of production, but when the world is short of food and the prices go up, then Europe is morally obliged to produce food. Europe is never going to starve, whatever the price of food is, because we basically have money to pay for it, but many parts of the world will. All of a sudden we are in a different world and one that we must face up to. The Commission is proposing a set-aside of 0% for 2008 and at the beginning of the marketing year 2008, like I said, the market is characteristically high in price.
As the Commissioner said, we have had droughts in some parts of Europe and we have had floods in others. We also see, throughout the world, changing situations on grain, where in Australia you have salt coming up through the land and it is becoming very difficult to plant. We are also seeing China and India taking in unprecedented amounts of food because of their economies increasing and wanting more food. All this is taking its toll on the wheat and cereal production throughout the world. We are now probably at about half the stocks that we historically have and stocks are getting low, so now is the time to do it.
I believe, Commissioner, and I am sure you do too, that if we have a common agricultural policy that is decoupled away from production, we cannot really have set-aside in many respects because, if ever there was a policy that was linked to production, then set-aside must be that, so now is very much the time to remove it.
As we remove set-aside, we must remember that there have been some environmental benefits to it and we must remember, too, that farmers will have the choice now as to whether to plough up set-aside land or not. Under single farm payment systems they could still carry on using it if they so chose, but the economic benefits of actually growing cereals will mean that many of them will plough the land. We can still have the six-metre strips around the fields and hedgerows on environmental means and I think that is also very good.
It is not really something to be debated tonight, but I think, in the health check, one of the things we will deal with is that there is no doubt that we will have to move to second generation biofuels and not actually use wheat and oil seed rape for biofuels. Again, a year ago I was very much in favour of that when prices were low, but now when prices are high we will literally only fuel that.
I recommend to Parliament that we deal with this swiftly. I thank all the groups for their support and I thank the Commissioner very much for her speedy response. Together I think we can come to the right decision. There are a few amendments here from the PSE Group and the Verts/ALE Group, most of which we will be able to support. One, however, I cannot accept – and that is a tax on the export of grain, because farmers have suffered low prices in the past. As soon as prices rise, please do not actually put a tax on it because that would not be quite right in my opinion. If we are going to deal with market forces we are going to have to face up to the realities of life."@en1
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"chairman of the AGRI committee"1
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