Dr Franz Fischler, the EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, is determined that the disasters which have hit European agriculture in recent months, can be turned into opportunities. Three weeks into his Union-wide tour with fellow commissioner, Mr David Byrne, the Irishman who handles Europe's brief on Health and Consumer Affairs, he outlined his vision of the future of agriculture to the industry in Dublin Castle. Later, the genial former politician and university lecturer, expanded on the vision he shares with Commissioner Byrne of a "sustainable" system of agriculture which will satisfy the consumer, the farmer and the processor. Dr Fischler, who is proud of his rural roots and has an intimate knowledge of Ireland, said that demand for a change in agricultural methods is being fuelled by the concerns of the consumer all across the union. "People are worried about the production methods of the farm and in processing plants. They are worried about how agriculture can be sustained without further damage to the environment," he said.
"But the idea of an agriculture which is sustainable should not be confused with a return to farming methods of the last century or simply the creation of niche markets," he said. Innovation, he said, was vital to secure the future of farming and the sustainability of rural areas. Research in universities and agricultural institutes and the industry, had a crucial role to play in developing forms of agriculture and food production which were sustainable in agronomic terms which would also satisfy the health and quality demands of the consumer. In response to these demands, he said, in the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in Agenda 2000, there were key elements in providing the conditions in which agricultural sustainability could flourish.
The so-called "second pillar" of the Agenda 2000 concentrating on rural development and agri-environmental measures were key elements in underpinning the need to "synchronise our actions with nature". But the future, he made clear, was about "responsible stewardship" of the natural resources including responsible water management, measures to prevent desertification and shrinking biological diversity. Along side those was the need to develop commerce in rural areas using the new technologies and opening up the countryside to the general public. There was no argument for changing the CAP which promoted environmentally friendly agriculture. Pressed that such a vision of a new enlarged Europe might be too "green" for conventional farmers, the Commissioner made it clear that he was neither green in the sense of being a "greenhorn" nor someone who was opposed to using conventional methods. "What we should not do is discuss the question of organics from a dogmatic point of view. Consumers should have a choice and if we can increase the consumption in offering more choices, why shouldn't we do that," he said. "This is the way that we should be making progress. We have to look much more at the whole food-chain.
"Food is not only a question of agriculture. We must be aware of the fact that many of the food scares in recent months were not the result of farming," he said. "They were problems created by the industry. For instance, the feeding stuffs and also, for example, the rendering. So the way forward is that we strengthen the weakest links in the chain," he said. Was he therefore talking about a two-tier system of agriculture, especially in relation to enlargement, where many of the farms in Eastern Europe are very small? "There is only one CAP and this will be the same into the future. But there is a clear question mark for the candidate countries because their agricultural system is so different from ours," he said. A country like Poland, with two million farmers, needed a lot of restructuring, not only to make agriculture more efficient but part of that discussion must be that the EU had to provide alternatives to people leaving the countryside, he said. He said that if the concentration was on making agriculture more competitive, then hundreds of thousands of people would be made unemployed.