Ihe common agricultural policy (CAP) is a dinosaur. It maintains unsustainable production practices in the face of climate and biodiversity challenges, and weakens European cohesion. The European Commission has made strategic mistakes in recent years. It has renationalised the CAP, instead of strengthening its dimension as a pillar of European integration and agro-ecological transformation. It gave in to pressure from Member States for less common rules and unambitious agri-environmental restrictions. It has accepted that this CAP is not subject to the ecological ambitions of the Green Pact, which is already doing too little, too late. In view of the climatic and environmental impact of agriculture, this is an aberration. To believe that no one in Brussels has read the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on land use.
This CAP undermines the commitments of the Paris agreement (2015) in terms of climate and biodiversity. If it remains unchanged, based on subsidies for fossil fuels, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, if the Green Deal does not transform extractive land use into an ecologically sustainable agricultural and food system before 2027, the Paris agreement will lose its relevance and European food sovereignty will be threatened.
The European Union (EU) is structurally very dependent on imports of animal feed and foodstuffs from third countries whose production systems are not sustainable, and some of which are slavery-based. At the same time, the EU subsidizes its exports to emerging and developing countries, with the effect of market destabilization and food insecurity.
Hand on the hoard
The war in Ukraine revealed this dependence with skyrocketing cereal prices and the shortage of sunflower oil. The grain that left Ukraine was first transported to European meat production sites before being supplied to regions suffering from hunger. Under pressure from the agro-industrial lobby, in particular the Committee of Professional Agricultural Organizations of the European Union, the political reflex of EU agriculture ministers has been to mow down the few attempts at greening such as crop rotation and the abandonment of fallow land, which is now ploughable. Agronomic, ecological and climatic nonsense.
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