THE MISSING OPTION

Our answer to the 3 options that the EU Commission presented on 17 November. None of these 3 options will meet the challenges Europe is facing for food and agriculture. our 4 option, the "missing option" was published on 26th January 2011 and mentioned and distributed during a CAP hearing of the Agriculture Committee of the EU Parliament. It was handed to EU Commissionerfor agriculture Dacian Ciolos on 27 Jan. by a delegation of the European Coordination Via Campesina. See the homepage for the text in different languages.

OURS is A WELL-FUNDED OPTION: findings by economists point in the same direction: 

As a group we have requested agricultural scientists to put together an alternative proposal for a new CAP. The coordinators were Jean Marc Boussard and Aurélie Trouvé. We (well, mainly the scientists) have worked at it for over a year. Jean Marc Boussard presented it to European NGOs in Brussels on 14thJuly and Aurélie intervened during the big CAP conference organized by Commissioner Ciolos on 19/20 July in Brussels. (See 'AGENDA'). Printed copies of the English and French text were distributeds at the meeting in Brussels.

We got funds from Oxfam/novib (the Netherlands), and from Friends of the Earth Europe to pay for this research.

See the proposal for a new policy (34 pages, including a summary of about 4 pages at the beginning) , in English and French.

See also the the annexes (On Biofuels, American agricultural policy, market power, WTO), in English and French.

See also the follow-up study backed by most of the scientists: a budget (5 pages) that goes wth these proposals. They appear to be much less costly than the current policy or the proposals by others. We also enclose a short version of this budget (one page)   

INFO

Below you will also find a    'short survey'   ( 10 pages) of the current debate about food and agriculture in Europe. This has info, about (among other things) botttom-up alternatives for change; about he current European policy and what a number of groups in Civil Society propose, and about European policy with regard to developing countries, and comments 
        by Civil Society organisations. We hope you find this useful.

SEE BELOW FOR PDF VERSIONS OF THESE DOCUMENTS.