By Lucy Knight

FARMERS are in need of a pay rise if they’re to be expected to keep producing food for the world, a parliamentary hearing in Canberra was told last week.

Science writer and former head of CSIRO media, Professor Julian Cribb, told a Senate Inquiry on food production last week that major investments in farmers were needed to make it worth their while getting out of bed each day.

What’s happening instead, he said, is increasing competition for cheap food supplies by major supermarket chains the world “closing down” or “destroying” local industries and driving more and more people out of agriculture.

Professor Cribb has recently launched a new book, The Coming Famine, where he speaks of the global food challenge and what efforts are needed to avoid it, including an entire chapter on securing a ‘fair deal for farmers’.

He told the hearing the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation last year revealed investments in the order of $80 billion a year in agriculture were needed to help meet these needs.

Professor Cribb said the FAO saw there was currently no incentive for farmers or scientists to invest in agriculture at the moment as “the returns are so poor”.

“Today we have the effect of global competition between large food and supermarket companies driving down the price in any country you care to name around the world as they seek to source cheaper and cheaper produce,” Professor Cribb said.

“This is having the effect of disrupting and even destroying entire local industries.

“We are seeing is happening to Australia: the dairy industry, the fruit and vegetable industry and so on. They are under and an awful lot of pressure by this globalisation of prices.

“I argue this is a one-way street. If you keep on doing that you will drive more people out of agriculture, you will throw away our lot of otherwise viable agricultural industries, you will definitely mine the soil and water resource much worse than it is being mined at the moment and basically you will undermine global food security.

“My conclusion from that is that farmers worldwide have to have a pay rise or they are not going to make the investments that are necessary to sustain global food production.”

Professor Cribb argued that price rise could take a number of forms.

“Most people get fair pay these days, whether they are politicians or journalists or actors or nurses or doctors. Farmers don’t. Farmers cop it both ways.

“They are confronted on the one hand by muscular companies selling them inputs at very high-cut prices and on the other hand by muscular companies offering to pay them very low prices for their output.

“Only a tiny smidgen of highly efficient producers can survive in that world. The logic of that, if we want global food security, is that it has to stop.”

Professor Cribb said it was important the “right signal” was sent to farmers to continue investing in agriculture, and for young farmers so they don’t leave the sector altogether.

Source: http://fw.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/agribusiness-and-general/finance/why-farmers-need-a-pay-rise/1859902.aspx?storypage=2

Posted: 21 June 2010 under Agri solutions, Agribusiness worldwide.
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Rapeseed rose nearly 3% to E334.00 a tonne for August delivery, a contract high, and the best price for a near-term lot for 19 months.
The better-traded November lot notched up similar records by touching E338.75 a tonne.
The rises reflected the impact of Canada’s sodden spring - which the Canadian Wheat Board estimates will leave up to 12.5m acres of cropland in the west of the country unsown on hopes for production of canola, the rapeseed variant.
Furthermore, the harvest in Ukraine, a key exporter to the European Union, has been dented by winterkill.
“There are problems in Canada, there are problems in Ukraine, and prices of these are higher once you have got them into the EU,” David Sheppard at UK grain merchant Gleadell said.
“Therefore, our market probably has to go up a bit.”
Crushers’ needs
At Macquarie Securities, the investment bank, commodities analyst Alex Bos said that the rise in Paris rapeseed prices was “definitely a spillover from Canada’s canola situation”, which looked set in particular to hit exports.
“Canada’s canola crushers have expended crushing capacity, and to keep those plants running they need to buy enough in the domestic market,” Mr Bos told Agrimoney.com.
“That will limit export availability.”
Canada’s farm ministry last month estimated domestic canola use jumping by 21% to nearly 6m tonnes in 2010-11, with exports falling 7.1% to 6.5m tonnes. The ministry will unveil fresh data later this month.
Global impact
A slide in exports is unlikely to have a direct impact on Europe, which operates strict curbs on biotech crops, which comprise the great majority of Canada’s canola/rapeseed harvest.
However, it would encourage other importers to raise their rapeseed prices, so lifting the whole market.
“The real danger for Europe is if higher world prices take Ukrainian exports away from Europe to another market,” Mr Bos said.
Paris’s August rapeseed contract closed up E3.00 at E327.75 a tonne, with the November lot ending E2.75 higher at E332.50 a tonne.
In Winnipeg, canola for July delivery stood 2.6% higher at Can$426.90 a tonne at 17:30 GMT, its highest since August last year, and setting course for an eighth successive day of gains.

Source: http://www.agrimoney.com/news/canada-woes-send-paris-rapeseed-to-19-month-high–1857.html

Posted: 17 June 2010 under Agri Trading, Agribusiness worldwide.
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Jack Thurston | February 5th, 2010 - 11:20 am

The biggest driver for further reform of the CAP is budgetary. At a time when most governments are struggling with vast budget deficits, public expenditure is under pressure as never before. Policy-makers are looking for ways to trim budgets, to get better value for public money and to ensure that budgets are aligned with their most pressing policy priorities. Several years ago the commission initiated a ‘fundamental’ review of the EU budget and it is expected that this will set the scene for the debate over the EU’s finances from 2014 onwards. The views of member states are critical, as they hold the EU’s purse strings. James Clasper and I have this week published a new analysis of the views of member states on the EU budget and the CAP, based in part on their responses to the budget review consultation. As part of the analysis we created a typology of member states, with five categories: Gold Diggers, happy to reap the benefits of integration and let others pick up the tab; Misers, fans of budget discipline and a smaller CAP, but keen to claim compensation for their net balance deficits; Big Spenders, who want an ambitious budget but are prepared to pay for it; Modernisers, who want to keep the budget under control but also to simplify its structure and Fence-Sitters, quick to pay lip service to the idea of budgetary discipline, but still keen to maintain CAP spending levels.

Source:http://capreform.eu/does-the-cap-fit/

Posted: 17 June 2010 under Agribusiness worldwide, Europe.
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