Qui va nourrir le monde?

Who will feed the World? With this ambitious “high-level” conference held in the European Parliament the French have started the Presidence of the EU. However, ambitious is not the right word to describe the French hypocrisy involved in an event to let everybody see French’s vision of agriculture’s future. I was really amazed about the format of the Conference, it was a show! There was a moderator, who seemed a football match commentator ensuring the Conference was driven according to French interests. They tried to manipulate the public with a combination of speeches an emotional (and sometimes illogical) clips.

Regrets: Pascal Lamy, President of the OMC, was a complete disappointment. He didn’t say anything relevant. Hans-Gert Pöttering, President of the EU Parliament, has never been enrolled in a course on public speeches… he was all the time reading his speech!

Pleasures: I liked the intervention of Louis Michel, Comissioner for development and humanitarian aid.. a clever man! Fischer, Comissioner for agriculture and rural development, was ok, but didn’t impressed me. Borrell.. I had bad prejudices about him, but he was one of the few who spoke clearly, attacking the roots. Also, Okonjo-Iwela, an executive of the WB, was fabulous.

Last Thrusday (03/07/2008) in the European Parliament much was said about the food crisis. What I would retain is that

(1) “PAC is not part of the problem, but of the solution”. The French ensured that everybody kept in mind that not only the PAC should be maintained but also that agriculture is a priority area.

(2) regional trade areas like the European one should be promoted in developing countries,

(3) food market needs more regulation to avoid speculation and guarantee a human need. The key point is that food production is not about efficiency, surpluses are needed.

(4) Investment in developing countries should be revised. We have always associated economic development as the explosion of manufacture sector, but this has revealed to be a falsehood… and investment on agriculture has fallen from 16% to 4%. For instance, Africa has a great agricultural potential but lacks the capital to exploit it (fridges and infrastructures are needed).

But the most motivating question is why bilateral agreements ACP-Europe haven’t succeed (Cottonu agreements abolished trade barriers to African, Caribbean and Pacific countries). Tim, a lobbyist I met in the Conference, says that although formal tariffs have disappeared, the sanitary conditions required to enter have become the new obstruction. Another answer could be farm models. In Africa farms are very small and not collectively organized. But this is again a partial answer, because if they knew they’ll profit, collective action will emerge.

It was worth to spend the day there, the lunch offered by the Comission was great.. :)

Further info: http://www.parlonsagriculture.com/