Notre Europe's viewpoint | 21/05/2007 

Widely supported in its early days, the Common Agricultural Policy has attracted much criticism since the 1970s. The reform process started in 1992 has not defused the situation: the CAP, the EU's oldest and most integrated policy, remains the subject of heated rhetoric and incessant arguments over figures.

For today's urban European societies, memories of unmechanised agriculture and bad harvests are distant. On the other hand, questions such as price support or neglect of the rural environment remain very present in people's minds.

Faced with other priorities, and in the absence of carefully reasoned evaluation, the risk is that we forget the precious contributions the CAP has made to our economies and societies. To cite the main ones: security of food supply and food quality; raised living standards for farming people; more stable markets; and the guarantee of reasonable prices for the consumer.

The CAP's legitimacy, as much as that of the European project in general - which agriculture, in its way, has embodied for 50 years - makes it vital that Europe's agriculture stakeholders have their say in the debate over the CAP's "health checkup" due in 2008-09. To renew the legitimacy of the CAP, its supporters must both explain its record and point to the challenges of the future - whether related to farming, food or the environment.

As the first phase of our research programme, CAP 2013, we will be studying the issues which promise to shape the agriculture of tomorrow. This month, with Josef Schmidhuber, senior economist at the FAO, Notre Europe asks a key question about the future direction of European agriculture: "Biofuels: An Emerging Threat to Europe's Food Security?"