The chair of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine has said that the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) must go “back to basics”.
Jackie Cahill is today (Monday, March 21) attending a conference of committee chairs of the parliaments of the 27 EU member states in Val de Loire in France.
The Fianna Fáil TD said that recent geopolitical events have “driven home the fact” that food security must remain high on the agenda for legislators.
“After World War II, the Common Agricultural Policy was designed to protect food security in Europe. It was to ensure that we produced enough food, as efficiently as possible, to feed a growing population.
“In recent times, we are seeing the CAP move away from a production-based policy to an environmental-based policy,” the Tipperary representative outlined.
“I fully accept that we have to move with the climate change agenda, but we cannot do so at the cost of production when we have a growing global population to feed.
“The unjustifiable and horrifying war in Ukraine has proven that our food security is not guaranteed. Just as the European people did not take food security for granted post-1945, we, as European legislators, must not take food security for granted today,” he added.
CAP reform
Deputy Cahill said that he firmly believes the EU cannot afford to reduce food production.
“We have a growing population to feed globally, and over one billion of that population is starving or malnourished as things stand, so it is impossible from my point of view to see how curbing production, and threatening our food security here, will be of benefit to any sector of society,” he said.
“Less food production means higher prices for the consumer. Quite simply, less food production potentially means less food security for our people.
“There is a clear consensus emerging here today, and one that I very much welcome, and that is that CAP has to be looked at again.
“When the new CAP was framed it was in a very different global environment and that has since changed completely,” the TD continued.
“Restrictions on production have to be revisited in the context of food security. Recent events have really driven home to many of us, just how vulnerable we are when it comes to food security.
“We, as a European Union, must go back to basics with CAP. We must not take our food security for granted.
“The world is rapidly changing and recent events have proven that we must remain united, as a European community, to protect the welfare and needs of all our people, and that most definitely includes feeding our people,” Cahill concluded.