FUW President's New Year Message 2013

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Food production is not keeping pace with demand and the implications of this are terrifying, Farmers' Union of Wales president Emyr Jones warns in his New Year Message.

Mr Jones recalls that, during a recent visit to the European Parliament, he was presented with a copy of "The Politics of Land and Food Scarcity" by the book's editor Professor Paolo De Castro.

Prof De Castro is an agricultural economist, a former Italian Minister of Agriculture, and, as chairman of the committee tasked with scrutinising, negotiating and distilling proposed changes to the Common Agricultural Policy, is currently the most important person in the EU in relation to agriculture.

Mr Jones said: "De Castro's book makes for uncomfortable reading. Its introduction summarises the situation by stating that the current emergency '...in our latitudes, where expenditure [on food] counts for less than 15 per cent of overall household expenditure, risks being viewed as remote, while it is actually dramatically close'.

"That emergency is the fact that food production is not keeping pace with demand, and the political and wider implications of this over the coming years are truly terrifying.

"This has long been recognised by experts and agriculturalists around the globe but news of the emergency has apparently yet to reach the powers that be in Westminster.

"While countries such as China are involved in 'land grabbing' in Africa and elsewhere as part of the struggle to secure food supplies, our own UK Government and the opposition argue in favour of effectively abandoning our key control over food production - the Common Agricultural Policy - which was designed to address just such an emergency.

"Politicians are renowned for not being able to see further than the next election but it also seems than many are unable to learn from the lessons of living-memory. Our dependence upon food imports in the 1930s almost led to starvation and the loss of the War in the 1940s, and rationing continued well into the 1950s.

"While the prospect of another war on our doorsteps seems far away, population growth and food productivity, coupled with rising energy costs, climate change and a host of other challenges, mean that what we now face is unprecedented.

"The Welsh Government and others are, to their credit, arguing such points, and within continental Europe EU and across the globe these challenges are at the forefront of discussions. Meanwhile, UK Government and opposition continue to sleepwalk into the biggest emergency we have ever faced.

"Over the next year, critical decisions regarding how we finance and alter the Common Agricultural Policy will be made and these will have a dramatic impact on how we deal with the emergency.

"As the UK focusses on extreme arguments regarding membership of the EU, those which relate to retaining control of our own democracy while ensuring we are united enough to face the coming storm seem thin on the ground.

"Let us hope that 2013 brings change."

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