Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-04-22-Speech-2-266"
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"en.20080422.49.2-266"2
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"Mr President, since it was introduced in 1957, the common agricultural policy has provided us with abundant quantities of food at reasonable prices. However, consumers are now facing very large price increases for bread and milk owing to rising demand, particularly because there have been several years with very poor harvests around the world. Europeans are now beginning to notice this financially, and for the less fortunate this is already giving rise to difficult situations. For the poorest developing nations and for developing nations that are dependent on food imports, the situation is completely unsustainable. However, for the developing countries that export food, the high prices are beneficial, as their revenues are increasing.
I would like to emphasise the fact that we should make a distinction between the supply shortages and high prices. Supply shortages are something that we should take seriously and react to. However, as long as a litre of cola costs more than a litre of milk, I do not think that the price of milk is unrealistically high. The World Bank has concluded that demand for food will increase by 60% during the period up until 2030, primarily as a result of increased demand from countries such as China and India, where the demand for food is increasing in line with the growth in prosperity. It should also be noted that our grain stocks are the lowest they have been in the last 60 years – stocks are now at a critically low level. Yet another poor harvest in 2008 could lead to a food supply shortage that no one ever thought was possible.
We need to appreciate the seriousness of the situation; we need to trade, and we need to take the opportunities available to us. We must find the correct balance between environmental needs and the need to produce sufficient food in order to meet demand. In this connection we cannot progress unless we discuss biotechnology and confront the campaign of fear concerning genetically modified food with objective information. In my opinion, biotechnology offers a number of potential solutions to the current situation. The GMO scare so prevalent around Europe has consequences that are completely absurd. Instead of importing feed in the form of soya beans and maize for our animals, we are feeding them with cereal products that could be used for human food. The blaming of biofuels for the rise in food prices must also be the result of a lack of knowledge of the facts, as food crops are not generally used for biofuels in Europe.
We have many good tools available. First and foremost, we should use the agricultural industry, which is ready to take up the challenge. We should develop the agricultural industry instead of tending to run it down, which has been the case in politics in recent years. We should retain the environmental benefits that we have achieved, but we have many opportunities to preserve these benefits whilst at the same time increasing production. For example, political decisions determine how much fertiliser we should add to a corn field. It should of course be factual and objective considerations that prevail."@en1
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