On 9 April at its headquarters in Nogent-sur-Marne, on the outskirts of Paris, GRET organised a seminar on the impacts of the common agricultural policy (CAP) on small-scale farming in developing countries. The seminar presented the provisional results of a study on the same subject, conducted on behalf of the Coordination Sud agriculture and food commission (C2A) (in french) and will be published at the end of June. The objective of this study is to inform Coordination Sud’s advocacy actions, with a view to the next CAP reform, in particular among newly elected members of the European parliament.
During this seminar, which had a strong attendance (approximately one hundred participants), four subjects were covered:
– competition from subsidised European products in markets in developing countries;
– the impacts generated in developing countries by the production of soya crops and other livestock feed for European farms;
– the impacts of food crops being displaced to facilitate the development of agro-fuels;
– the impacts of climate change, to which the European agricultural and food system contributes significantly and the fact that small-scale farms in developing countries are among the main victims of this climate change.
Apart from presentation of the study’s provisional results, various guests spoke at the seminar: Hindatou Amadou, advocacy and gender manager with Apess (in french) (West-African livestock farmers’ organisation) and coordinator of the “My milk is local” campaign; Marielle Palau, a Paraguayan sociologist and coordinator of the report on the effects of agribusiness in Paraguay; Cyrielle Denharthig, from Réseau Action Climat (in french); Pierre Maison, a representative of the French Confederation of farmers (in french); Jean-Baptiste Fauré, a representative of the French Ministry of Agriculture and Food; Maria Heubusch, rapporteur of the European Parliament Committee on Development for CAP, and representatives of four lists running for the forthcoming European elections. Philippe Jahshan, chairperson of Coordination sud (in french), gave the concluding speech.
