De kwetsbaarheid van het Europese landbouw- en voedselsysteem ...

• at the European level, promote coordinated creation of emergency stockpiles of vaccines
and antibiotics, and coordination of the corresponding application capacity and culling
capacity;
• prevent a livestock crisis if vaccination takes place after an outbreak because the food industry
and supermarket chains boycott meat and dairy products from vaccinated animals,
or offer a much lower price, resulting in healthy animals being culled because their products
are unmarketable. The EU should make agreements about this with large buyers.
In addition, promote a European fund to compensate livestock farmers for vaccinationrelated
price cuts.
Developing countries
Recommendation 12. Hold the EU to its commitment to phase out export subsidies
During the Doha Round of the WTO, the EU agreed to phase out its export subsidies by
2013. This offers developing countries better opportunities to develop their agriculture and in
this way to improve their food security. The EU must be held to this commitment.
Even so, the EU continues farm payments. These are also a form of dumping – although a less
aggressive one – in the sense that they have made it possible for the EU to lower agricultural
prices to the level of the world market without encountering massive resistance from its farmers.
Ask the EU to conduct research into the consequences of this policy for developing
countries and into possible modifications to minimise the consequences.
The USA also provides financial support for its agriculture, though less than the EU. More
important is the practice in the USA where large companies with strong market power purchase
agricultural commodities from farmers at below the price of production then dump them
on the world market at low prices. Determine whether this practice is also prevalent in the
EU. Put this “corporate dumping” on the WTO agenda with the aim of making agreements
on mutual reduction.
Recommendation 13. Allow countries room for self-sufficiency
The right to sufficient food is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Given
the lagging progress on the Millennium Development Goal of halving hunger by 2015, that
right deserves higher priority. Most hunger is suffered in the countryside, not least by farmers.
Continue to support the rightful demands of developing countries that they should be
allowed to protect their own farmers with import levies or quotas against invasions of
cheap products from the world market.
In addition, support government-wide policy – therefore including your colleague ministers
for Development Cooperation and Finance – to put pressure on the IMF and World Bank to
allow room in their loan conditions for developing countries to protect their agricultural sectors
(at least temporarily) from destructive floods of cheap imports.
In order to simultaneously respond to the interests of trade (which for each country is also an
internal buffer against calamities), this law can possibly be combined with a compulsory
minimum market access.
Recommendation 14. Maintain increased funding for agriculture in developing countries
After the food crisis of 2007/08, agriculture is once again high on development agendas, also
that of the World Bank, the EU and the Netherlands. The new Dutch government has confirmed
this priority. The previous government also initiated a global conference about food
security and climate change held in 2010. There will be a sequel to this conference in 2012.
In that context, also prioritise the following:
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