Sorting Out the CAP – Striving for a European agricultural

The agriculture issue has taken a dramatic turn with the hunger riots and food shortages currently affecting various parts of the planet. Emergency measures seem necessary in the context of development policy; longer term, the consequences for European farmers’ incomes might allow – paradoxically – an intelligent reshuffling of the CAP’s cards. Such is the audacious idea that Jean Nestor contributes to the debate over the CAP’s “health check”

The current trend in the prices of agricultural raw materials calls for an indepth reform of the inconsistent entity that the common agricultural policy has become. It presents an opportunity for the European Union to abandon former stereotypes and the poor compromises that the latter has accumulated.

Since most of the former instruments have been “disabled” by current market trends, we can now distinguish between a well thought-out review of the agricultural and food market regulations that Europe needs and a rethinking of the policies currently being funded under the CAP that have no reason to be federated by an agricultural policy and to assume the form of revenue transfers to farmers.

This situation, which is bound to cause many problems in the world, may be a chance for Europe to “sort out” its oldest common policy.