Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-02-16-Speech-3-410-000"
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"en.20110216.15.3-410-000"2
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"Madam President, rising food prices can bring governments to their knees. We have seen that in recent days.
I would just like to take us back a little bit. I have been a Member of this Parliament since 1989. When I came to Europe in 1989, we did not have a food problem. We had beef mountains, we had butter mountains, we had milk lakes and we had cereal mountains. Now they are all gone and we are not producing enough food fast enough to feed ourselves.
So where has the food gone and why have we only a small supply? When a drought in any part of the world can actually cause total confusion in the whole market for everyone else, this is not a situation that we can allow to continue.
We have a situation in the European Union where farmers are leaving the industry hand over fist in every Member State. In actual fact, what we are doing is to encourage them to go even faster, and we have no young farmers coming into the industry.
We must act before it is too late to reverse the trend in rising global food prices. This action must be taken sooner rather than later to alleviate the pressure that has been put on ordinary people.
Shelter for ordinary people can be constructed through a strong common agricultural policy which ensures high-quality food at reasonable prices without negative impacts on the environment. A strong pillar of direct payments is vital for the world and to meet food demands. Further steps can be taken to solidify this in the future, which is much needed as far as investment and, indeed, research and development is concerned. Hopefully we can find a way to do that.
The problem as I see it is that everyone comes here to these debates and makes all the right statements, says all the right platitudes, but they are not prepared to take the tough decisions necessary to help those most in need.
I have to say that talking is no longer enough: it is action we need on global stocks and volatility in the market, and until you start to tackle that problem, you will not solve the problem."@en1
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