News for Africa. It is great to see that finaly some understanging of African economic problems arrive at European capitals. At the end of colonialism all exept four of the African states were self sufficiant in regard to food production. Now none of the African states produces enough food for their populations. In contratst, Vietnam was food importer in the 1950s and now they are among exporters.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/939ee094-148d-11dd-a741-0000779fd2ac.html

Europe’s CAP the ‘answer’ to food crisis

By Ben Hall in Paris

Published: April 27 2008 21:58 | Last updated: April 27 2008 21:58

Africa and Latin America should adopt their own versions of Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy as a response to rising demand for food, according to Michel Barnier, France’s farm minister. While critics of the CAP prepare to use surging food prices and threats of shortages to seek freer trade in agriculture, Mr Barnier told the Financial Times that, on the contrary, the developing world should draw inspiration from Europe and form self-sufficient regional agricultural blocs funded with a redirection of development aid.
Mr Barnier, a former French foreign minister, ex-EU commissioner and member of the governing centre-right UMP party, said he would not allow Europe’s system of subsidies and barriers to trade to take the blame for “disorder” surrounding the commodities spike in prices and associated unrest in some countries.
“What we are now witnessing in the world is the consequence of too much free-market liberalism,” he said. “We can’t leave feeding people to the mercy of the market. We need a public policy, a means of intervention and stabilisation.
“I think [the CAP] is a good model. It is a policy that allows us to produce to feed ourselves. We pool our resources to support production. West Africa, East Africa, Latin America and the southern shore of the Mediterranean all need regional common agricultural policies.”
The EU should provide money and know-how to help these regions adopt their own CAPs, he added. France wants to use its rotating presidency of the EU, which starts in July, to kick-start a debate about the future of the CAP after 2013, when the current funding regime runs out.
Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, has sent mixed signals, saying European farmers should rely less on subsidies while demanding they receive preferential treatment.
France has proposed to its EU partners a tightening up of Europe’s quality and health regulations for food to curb imports of crops and meat that do not meet European standards. “This is the new policy of European preference,” Mr Barnier said.
Mr Barnier said poorer countries should not put cultivation of cash crops for export before feeding their populations. The aim of pooling resources, as under Europe’s CAP, was self-sufficiency not the creation of an export industry, although he welcomed France’s own €9bn trade surplus in farming and food.
He said he was “not sure” that the World Trade Organisation was the “right place to discuss the relationship between food and agriculture”. “Whatever the outcome of the Doha round [of trade talks], suspension, failure or success, we need to ask what is the correct forum for discussing this”.
The minister said it was too early to say whether the EU’s agriculture budget should be reduced after 2013, pointing out that it will amount to 37 per cent of the EU’s budget in 2013, down from 81 per cent in 1985.