I’m afraid we are witnessing a breach of the social contract that was struck between society and farmers at the founding moment of the Common Agricultural Policy in 1962, following the Treaty of Rome of 1957.
When the CAP was founded, it was built around the objectives of cheap, abundant and safe food, with European preference, and, in return, an income guarantee for farmers. Well, none of those founding goals looks like it’s going to hold up in the immediate future.
In other words, I am challenging whether, from now on, food will be cheap, abundant and safe. Of course, we already know that the European preference is gone, and the income guarantee for farmers is over… they’ll have to fend for themselves.
The disappointing proposal that the Commission has put forward for the new Common Agricultural Policy makes me as angry, in equal measure, as I admire it for its sheer Machiavellian brilliance. And which, on top of that, brings to mind the plot of a famous film from 2012, The Hunger Games.
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