Steep agricultural commodity inflation around the globe will continue to boost French food prices unless the European Union finds ways to ramp up output, French Agriculture Minister Michel Barnier said on Thursday.
Speaking on the sidelines of an annual meeting of French farm co-operatives in Paris, the minister also said he was "truly worried" about the European Commission's latest proposals to adjust the bloc's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
From grains to milk and meat, prices of agriculture products have surged this year - a rise dubbed "agflation" by some economists - buoyed mainly by tight stocks and surging demand from rapidly-developing countries. "This is a long-lasting trend. We will continue to see high commodities prices - maybe not higher, but still high - because there will be less offer than demand for a long time," Barnier told Reuters in an interview. "We should not let global price rises impact peoples' food consumption and lifestyles here, so we have to protect them against that," he added.
The strategy should be carried out at EU level and be included in the Commission's so-called "health check" of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), a series of proposed adjustments put forward earlier this month, he said. However, Barnier, who was a member of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004, when he was in charge of regional policy, said the CAP proposals may prove insufficient to meet the challenges facing EU agriculture.
"I am truly worried about these proposals because they broadly lead to a dismantling of the tools we need," he said. "We cannot treat food the way we deal with other industrial products... We need to protect ourselves against existing risks, sanitary or ecological ones, but also against international speculation which we increasingly see on commodities (markets)."
Barnier said he would ask the Commission to implement new market stabilisation, regulation and prevention tools. French consumers have expressed growing concern over declining purchasing power - one of President Nicolas Sarkozy's main themes during his election campaign - and often lay the blame on higher food prices.
Comments
Comments are closed.