My last meeting of the day was with Mr. Julien Mousnier, who is a member of the cabinet of the UE commissioner of Ag. We discussed the difficulty of the upcoming next round of the CAP or Common Agricultural Policy. the first CAP was developed when there was only 15 member states. Now there are 27 and the landscape of agriculture has changed world wide. The first CAP focused on 3 principals: more competitiveness and market responsiveness; address the need of rural areas; and reflect growing concern about environmental issues and climate change. We talked a bit about the GMO situation in the EU and the opinions of various member states around GMO use. Currently the EU can import cattle feed from GMO crops, but they cannot grow the actual crops for animal feed! We also talked about the move away from subsidies by moving from production based payments, to lump payments and now to payments that are largely based on environmental issues and practices. Overall its interesting to see how the EU connects agriculture and the environment together in a greater way than the US does.
Later in the evening I had the pleasure of meeting three very nice folks from National farmers Union in the UK. One grain farmer, and two employees of the organization. we had a very interesting conversation about dairy, and their outlook on the fuel vs. food debate.
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