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Today farming and agriculture are at the forefront of politics in the EU.

What is really at stake and why are we in the situation where we are today?

As is always the case in the realm of politics, politics without a sound knowledge of history and the recent past simply doesn’t work and can’t stand the much needed “fact check”. Several topics need to be examined to understand our actual problems in the field of agriculture and farming.

Why do citizens of the EU have a “Common Agricultural Policy / CAP” in the first place?

Why it is utterly unfair to blame the EU for the presumed problematic situation of agriculture in Europe. What about the bills for ordinary average families in the EU to put some wholesome food on the table every day of the year? What about a realistic “strategic independence” in a globalised world? What is the meaning of de-risking and decoupling in relation to the rather poor “Global South.

Our CAP has been created by the six founding members of the EU in 1962. The objective was and still is today to put affordable food on the table for the population of Europe instigated by the unbearable sufferings and hardships including much hunger and undernourishment during the war amid the long periods of difficult and painful food rationing.

The EU being in essence a project of France and France being an important agricultural nation means that it has always taken into account the interests of its big important agricultural sector. The EU is based on a deal between France and Germany, free trading in Europe of industrial products which is and always has been foremost in the interest of “Export Meister” Germany coupled with free trade in agricultural produce, so important to France. The economic structure of France resembles very much the economic structure of the USA: strong in industry and equally strong in agriculture. France is in a certain way a USA-lite.

It is totally unfair to blame the EU for the problems facing our agriculture. The attitude of politicians in Europe to blame the EU for all kinds of policies perceived to go wrong and the propensity to take unearned credit for all policies that are popular in their very own backyard is simply morally incorrect and cowardly. The same political parties that run our cities and communities, our regions and nations also run the institutions of our EU. The European Parliament and the European Commission are literally populated by exactly the very same politicians and political parties. However this unfair tendency to always put the blame on the EU will at the end of the day destroy the very core of the EU. This behaviour, so detrimental to any further integration of our EU has to change. Our CAP has a long and rather difficult history of subsidising agriculture.

Subsidies are needed not only to keep agriculture alive in the EU but also to put food on the table at a reasonable price for most households. Food is still a costly item for many families in Europe especially in the new member states where a lot of people are actually still poor. The CAP not only serves the interests of farmers in Europe but also plays an important role in the field of social policies by fighting poverty in our backyard.

On the one hand Europe cannot become too dependent on the import of essential food items but on the other hand, as long as we want to trade in the wider world we have to realise that food is very often the only produce that many poor countries are able to sell on the world markets. Exporting our industrial surplus to the global South needs to go hand in hand with not destroying the local farming on which so many livelihoods depend in that same global South. Simply put, if the countries of the global South can’t export some food to the EU they won’t be able to earn the money needed to buy the products of our industry made in the EU and global trade will very much collapse.

Alas development and trade are two sides of the same coin, there is no other way for doing the much needed and necessary catch up. De-risking and decoupling for food means not importing food from our arch enemies that are intent on destroying us. EU doesn’t import much food and agricultural produce from Czarist Russia, communist China or Shia-Persia, let alone from starving North-Korea. All this cries out for more, not less integration in Europe so it is about time to morph our economic successful EU into our federal democratic United States of Europe to the image of our real friend the USA.