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European Commissioner Dacian Ciolos wants support for small farmers, to deal with market competition
European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Dacian Ciolos, in the Danube Rectors' Conference in Cluj Napoca (central-western Romania) on Thursday, said that the new Common Agricultural Policy would be based on innovation and research and that the universities would have a decisive role in supporting European farmers.
The reformed Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) brings a new understanding of the concept of sustainable agriculture and a new concept of economic and ecologic competitiveness, he showed.
'If we limit ourselves to the economic competitiveness, we talk about externality and we wanted to internalise this externality in order to ensure agricultural efficiency, we wanted to come up with an approach concerning food production and regeneration and agricultural production rediscovery, so that, through CAP we should give a chance to all types of farmers in Europe,' Dacian Ciolos said.
In the same context, he insisted on the need to directly support the farmers' revenues with priority payments for the young ones and with integrating small farmers so they could deal with the market competition, showing at the same time that a specific approach was needed in the case of disfavoured areas.
'Support is needed for a regional restructuring where European projects such as those devoted to fruit-growing or dairy production have not been promoted. CAP grants a major importance to aspects related to research and innovation because the results of these activities must be integrated in production. The great problem in the European Union is not scientific production, but the connection between the production sector and the scientific production,' Dacian Ciolos pointed out, adding that this aspect was fundamental in the European partnership for innovation.
At the same time, Dacian Ciolos underscored that innovation would also be supported by funding some rural development projects with two elements: the creation of some operational groups supporting producers in their report with consultants and professional training institutions and the creation of a support network putting in contact all these groups for the efficient dissemination of information within the EU.
In the European Commissioner's opinion, the scientific research results must be operatively transferred towards production, the university networks having an extremely important role in the innovation partnership.