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Making the most of Europe's rich harvest
30.07.2010 09:15 "Agro Perspectiva" (Kyiv) —
Economic, environmental and social issues will have to be taken into account when the EU begins to reform the Common Agricultural Policy.
A balmy summer evening in Brussels. The people mingling on the cobble-stone square are spoilt for choice of food and drink. Tangy mountain cheeses, succulent ham carved off the bone, juicy olives drenched in oil, ripe cherry tomatoes and delicious apples vie for attention. More exotically, smoked reindeer meat from Sweden jostles with Latvias hemp butter on rye bread, Flemish mattentaarten puff pastry and curd cakes. To the stamp of Irish folk dancing the drinks flow: wines sparkling, red and white, sweet herby liquors, ten-year-old malts, blueberry milk and pressed organic apple juice bearing the EUs new logo.
This is the dream image of European agriculture: a patchwork of 27 countries and myriad regions, producing appetising, high-value food and drink, conserving the countryside, and connecting the urban dweller to the land.
But this vision does not reflect the reality, according to numerous critics. Small farmers producing handmade cheeses receive much less in farm subsidies than wealthy landowners and major companies. More than 1,200 organisations get subsidies of ?1 million or more, according to farmsubsidy.org, a transparency organisation. And the specialist produce on display in Brussels is not representative of the intensive and industrialised farming that produces most of our food, and that pollutes rivers while leaving soils barren.
Nor does it tell the story of the high barriers to entry to farming which mean only 7% of farmers are under the age of 35, according to the association that represents them.
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