By Martin Banks - 13th May 2010
The only way we are going to address this is by EU member states producing more food for export
Harald von Witzke
The EU has been urged to invest more on agricultural research, which it has been accused of “neglecting” in recent years.
The demand comes in a new report which also calls for more “efficient use” of agricultural land in the EU to prevent “land-grabbing” outside its borders.
The report, “EU agricultural production and trade,” comes as a major commission review of the much-criticised Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) gets underway.
Prof Harald von Witzke, the report’s co-author, said the EU needs to invest more in agricultural research “if it is serious about tackling fighting climate change, feeding the world’s poor and preserving natural habitats.”
Presenting the findings of the report in Brussels, van Witzke, of the Humbolt University in Berlin, said, “Poor countries face rapidly increasing food shortages and malnutrition and the only way we are going to address this is by EU member states producing more food for export.”
He added, “Investment in agricultural research has been neglected and it needs to be stepped up, at least back to the levels of the 1970s.
The report shows that in 2007/2008 almost 35 million hectares of land beyond European borders was used for the benefit of Europeans, with the EU the world’s largest importer of agricultural products.
“That’s an astonishing figure: it’s almost equivalent to the entire territory of Germany,” said Prof Ettore Capri, director of OPERA Research Centre, which co-authored the research.
“This is exactly why we wanted bring these figures to the table so that the decision makers can take them into account.”
His comments were echoed by Irish MEP Mairead McGuinness who said, “Long-term food security is a major issue. The EU should be working now to encourage all means of increasing the productivity of our farmland.”
Addressing a panel discussion which followed presentation of the report, she said, “The challenge is to produce more using less of our scarce resources; land, energy and water. The challenge is also to produce better in terms of high quality, high value produce.”
“To secure long-term productivity growth in agriculture not just in Europe, but around the world, it is necessary for countries to provide increased public funding for agricultural research and to create a policy environment that encourages private research investment,” added McGuinness.
The analysis shows that between 1999 and 2008 Europe’s use of foreign land for its own agricultural production has grown by 40 per cent, or 10 million hectares.
It says the issue is compounded by change in land use in many virtual land-exporting countries, and increasing greenhouse gas emissions from the conversion from forests, grasslands and refuge into cropland.
It finds that the EU has become the world’s largest net importer of agricultural produce, and therefore the largest user of agricultural land that is not its own. In 2008, member states exported US$127.6 billion of agricultural commodities, but imported produce valued at US$173.1 - a net import of US$45.5 billion.
The report maintains that encouraging agricultural innovation and increasing productivity in major crops by just 0.3 percentage points per year would reduce the need to farm 5.3 million hectares of cropland outside the EU.
“If annual incremental growth rate in the EU’s agricultural production had doubled between 1999 and 2008,”it says, “the importation of virtual land would have been about 10 million hectares less and would have remained roughly at the 1999 level.
“By contrast, expanding the acreage of organically farmed land to 20 per cent would increase virtual land importation by almost 30 per cent. And policies to achieve the EU’s 10 per cent biofuel objective would also increase the rate of land-grabs.”
Speaking at the launch of the report, Mark Cropper, of the commission’s agriculture directorate, defended the EU’s research record.
He told this website that, currently, the EU dedicates some 250m euros annually to agricultural research, representing five per cent of the EU framework programme.
He added, “At the same time, however, it is important to point out that the remaining 95 per cent is spent, not by the commission, but my member states.”
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