The Common Agricultural Policy and Food Sovereignty

The future of our food is at stake!

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is one of the European Union’s key policies. Using nearly 40% of the EU’s budget payed for by European citizens. 80% of these funds goes to big farmers and the agribusinesses, and only 20% to the small local farmers across Europe. The CAP determines what kind of food we produce, how we market it and what we eat.

The discussion about the major reform of the CAP is happening right now and will last until the last of 2013; the reforms will be implemented in the period of 2014-2020. This will shake the future of the food system, how land is used and by whom in Europe and also around the globe. The European institutions (commission, council and parliament) decide about the future of the CAP. They continue to think that the main objectives of the CAP should be economic growth and the global competitiveness of the European food industry. Its priority is to ensure that European food companies can produce food products cheaply enough to sell them in global markets.

It is putting this interest ahead of providing all people in Europe with healthily produced food and considering the well-being of the planet. This supports current unsustainable forms of agriculture, destabilizing food prices for farmers and consumers and expanding the industrialized system of production that degrades and contaminates soil and water affecting people’s health, ecosystem and biodiversity.

This does not represent the future for our food. These forms of production will automatically lead to the collapse of local food production by small and family farmers. Particularly in new member states in Eastern Europe as well as in-developing countries that trade with Europe.

Another healthy and sustainable food system is possible!

But another food system is possible, based on the right of farmers and consumers to decide for themselves what food system they want. An option that protects the environment and ensures the access to healthy food and fair and stable incomes for farmers, it encourages sustainable systems of production that shorten the distance between farmers and consumers, avoiding the unnecessary transport of food across the globe and reducing carbon emissions. It safeguards local markets in the south instead of dumping subsidized products from Europe on them. And it prioritizes the use of land for food production rather than industrial commodities, while ensuring women and men have an equal voice in decision making.

This option is food sovereignty and it puts the earth and the people before profits and solidarity and cooperation before competitiveness. Changing the CAP is key in order to achieve food sovereignty. Millions of people and many organizations in Europe are already working to watch a CAP based on food sovereignty. You too can engage in this transformation, get involved in the process, our food and our future are at stake.

Activity:

Make a list of the advantages and disadvantages of both current industrial agriculture system and food sovereignty system.