SPEECH/06/700
Mariann Fischer Boel
Member of the European Commission responsible for Agriculture and Rural Development Innovation as a tool to increase competitiveness in the EU's agricultural sector
Young Farmer’s Conference Brugge, 17 November 2006
Ladies and gentlemen,
Let me say once again what a pleasure it is to be with you today – to see so many young farmers here, and of course to look at some inspiring examples of innovation in practice. Events like these do at least as much to build my confidence in the future of European farming as do the many hours that I regularly spend negotiating around a table with other politicians in Brussels!
I cannot say often enough that the work of CEJA and of the national and regional young farmers' associations is crucial to our future – not only the future of European agriculture, but also that of the European Union as a whole.
Some commentators think of farming only in terms of its contribution to our gross domestic product. But this kind of economic analysis often misses the point.
Yes, farming is partly about producing food and other raw materials. But it's about so much more than that. Farming plays an essential role in preserving the beauty of many of our most treasured landscapes, and it is still an important glue holding together many of our rural communities.
And of course, farming will not survive unless young people take it up as a profession. Even if agricultural policy-makers were perfectly wise and always made perfect decisions, this would do no good at all if no one was actually prepared to get on board the combine harvester.
I sometimes hear people say that now is a challenging time to be a farmer. That may be true. But it has often been true in the past as well. The first half of the twentieth century brought periods of economic depression and stormy unpredictability for European farmers. And if we think that globalisation is new, we should think back to farmers' anxieties in the late nineteenth century, when large shipments of grain suddenly started arriving in Europe from North America.
But let's come back to the present. There are certainly challenges to be faced today – as my son-in-law, who farms back in Denmark, would readily confirm! And one of these challenges is a growing need to be competitive.
This need is not the invention of politicians or economists. It arises from certain realities of the world as it is developing now.
One of those realities within the European Union is that our citizens are still willing to pay public money to farmers, but they now attach stricter conditions. They want to see the money spent well. They will not pay simply to cover up a lack of competitiveness.
Then there is the reality of globalisation. For decades now, it has been economically viable for agricultural goods of many kinds to cross the oceans. This tendency doesn't seem to have a reverse gear. As you know, many of the emerging economies have strong farm sectors which are eager to export even more. And the days when we could keep their products out with high tariff walls are disappearing – whatever may happen in the WTO Doha Round.
All in all, then, we need to compete as well as we can. There is more than one way of doing this. For some, it will mean holding down the price of bulk goods. For many others, it will mean competing on quality – producing the specialised goods, the best meats and wines, for which buyers will pay a premium. This is traditionally a strong point of European farming.
Whatever competitive strategies we use, innovation will always be one of our most important weapons. It is a key engine of growth and jobs – which of course are things that we want to see in the countryside just as much as in our towns and cities.
We can always find new ways of using technology to do things more efficiently. We can always create new products with extra added value. And there are always possibilities for new, creative forms of partnership within the food chain, or even with businesses outside it. Innovation in all these forms can raise our profits.
We need to open our minds to various kinds of innovation: we should not assume that innovation always involves complex technology.
In some cases, of course, science is an important factor. For example, technology is central in our efforts to unlock the full potential of the biomass market, which could hold attractive opportunities for many farmers.
To take another example: I recently read about new composting plants in the UK which are aiming for very high levels of efficiency. Here again, state-of-the-art technology is the key, and of course these plants are large projects.
However, innovation is sometimes more down-to-earth.
For example, some of Sweden's farmers have small areas of land with low productivity. Under a new project, they have been making this land available for race horses and show horses, which would otherwise be housed in less spacious conditions with breeders and trainers. The farmers make some extra money; the horses are happier; everybody wins.
Successful innovation usually has three key ingredients: imagination, determination, and perhaps financial support to get the project off the ground.
I don't need to give young farmers a lecture about imagination and determination. These things you have; you are the new blood in the profession! What I would like to underline now is that potential financial support is there.
The Common Agricultural Policy as a whole is now much more clearly geared towards people who want to do new things in new ways.
Within the CAP's first pillar, the introduction of decoupled payments to farmers gives them the freedom to produce exactly what the market wants, without fear of receiving a smaller support cheque in the post as a result.
And within the CAP's second pillar - our rural development policy – I have pushed innovation to the forefront. It is already implicit in many of the measures available through that policy. But in the first "axis" of the new Rural Development Regulation, which will come into force next year, support for innovation in products, processes and technologies is a measure in its own right.
Nor should we forget that innovation is also important in axes two and three of our rural policy – for caring for the countryside, for bringing greater breadth to our rural economies, and for giving people a higher quality of life in rural areas.
The new Community Strategic Guidelines for Rural Development, designed to bring greater coherence to rural development planning across the Union, will help to ensure that innovation is a topic for action, not lip service.
So I think that, within rural development policy, we have the right framework for encouraging innovation as a road to greater competitiveness. And with that framework comes money. We now have to spend that money to best effect over the next seven years.
Another important strand of the European Union's support for innovation is its agricultural research. The 7th Framework Programme of research sets out a number of "strategic" priorities related to sustainable agricultural production, food and health, and the use of life sciences and biotechnology. If we are serious about giving our agriculture a competitive future, we must also be serious about reaping a harvest of new ideas from this research.
In the years ahead, the CAP isn't going to stand still. And as it develops further, it must do even more to stimulate innovation and competitiveness. These must emerge even more clearly as focal points of our future model of agriculture.
I will have this fact very much in mind as we reflect on the future of the CAP in two exercises in the period 2008 to 2009. The first of these will be what I call a "health check", intended to make sure that the CAP is working as it should. The second will be a general review of the European Union budget, and will include thoughts about what the CAP could look like after 2013.
This is not the moment to talk about these exercises in detail. But I will say now that I very much look forward to hearing the ideas of our young farmers on the subject – especially at our young farmers' conference to be held next April in Brussels. And I say again: you can expect that any changes made to the CAP in the future will work in favour of those who show a spirit of youthfulness and new thinking.
I say "spirit of youthfulness", not simply "youth", because in one sense we should all stay young. As the great American car-maker Henry Ford said: "Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young." In this sense, I intend to stay young for the foreseeable future!
We will very often look to our young farmers for new ideas. But in agriculture as in other sectors – especially in the 21st century - innovation is something for all of us.
Thank you for listening.
