Memorandum by Professor David Harvey,
Newcastle University
1. OVERVIEW
What should be the long-term objectives of the
CAP? I see no reason to quarrel with the most recent expression
from the European Commission (with the changes as indicated below)
— A competitive agriculture sector
which can face up to the world market without being subsidised,
since this is not acceptable internationally nor coherent
or sensible domestically;
— Production methods which are
sound and environmentally friendly, able to supply quality products
of the kind the public wants;
— Diverse forms of agriculture,
rich in tradition, which are not just output-oriented but seek
to maintain the visual amenity of our countrysides as well as
vibrant and active rural communities, generating and maintaining
employment;
— A simpler, more understandable
agricultural policy which establishes a clear dividing line between
the decisions that have to be taken jointly and those which should
stay in the hands of the Member States;
— An agricultural policy which
makes clear that the expenditure it involves is justified by the
services which society at large expects farmers to provide.
European Commission, Explanatory Memorandum,
The future for European Agriculture Agenda 2000, Agricultural
Proposals, June, 1998
Does the title "Common Agricultural Policy"
aptly fit your perceived objectives of the policy?
No. A better title would be Healthy Agricultural
Trade (HAT). The general objectives do not imply a specific policy
for agriculture as such, other than assisting and encouraging
competitiveness and responsiveness to market opportunities and
demands. Specific policies are necessary for ensuring fair competition
between member states, and for ensuring adequate provisions for
public goods and for dealing with externalities, especially with
reference to the environment.
What do you consider to be the main pressures
on the CAP as it currently is?
The main forces appear to be: (1) public legitimacy,
rational coherence, and fiscal balance of support/payments to
farmers versus industry dependence on support, and capacity
to accept and adopt further reform and adjustment; (2) the enlargement
of the EU to include even more economies in transition, coupled
with the shift of emphasis towards payments for environmental
goods and services, implies widely differentiated and targeted
policies, undermining the traditional logic of a common policy,
commonly financed. These points are elaborated below.
2. THE REFORMED
CAP
(a) What has been your experience so far
with the reformed CAP?
Merely as a disinterested analyst/commentator.
(b) What has worked well and less well?
No comment, not elsewhere specified (nes).
(c) And where can lessons be learned?
No comment, nes.
3. THE SINGLE
PAYMENT SCHEME
(a) Do you consider the Single Payment Scheme
to be a good basis for the future of EU agricultural policy?
Yes, but only as a <au0,1>stepping-stone
to elimination of all strictly agriculturally-related public payments
and towards the development of appropriate mechanisms for the
payment for environmental goods and services.
(b) What changes might be made at the EU level
to the Single Payment Scheme, including to the rules governing
entitlements, in the short and/or the longer-term?
In the long term, universal entitlements to
SFP should be phased out, or the payments themselves phased out.
In the short term, the co-responsibility for provision of environmental
goods and services could be made more stringent and explicit,
though the implied bureaucracy and possibilities for political
failure should not be underestimated and suggest that phasing
out is sufficient.
4. MARKET MECHANISMS
(a) What short and longer-term changes are
required to the CAP's market mechanisms? Suggestions made by the
Commission have included re-examination of certain quotas, intervention,
set-aside, export refunds and private storage payments
The logic of coupled support, plus the clear
international (WTO) aspirations to reduce (eliminate) coupled
support (ie market intervention) both strongly suggest that <au0,1>all
commodity market mechanisms should be eliminated in the long run.
Short-term changes should be designed with this long run goal
in mind. Arguments for government-sponsored stabilisation and
insurance schemes need critical examination, though US style loan
rate instruments, at safety-net levels, could be sensible as short-term
facilitating measures in some under-developed market conditions
(in some economies in transition).
5. RURAL DEVELOPMENT
(a) What is your view on the introduction
of the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD)?
A sensible political initiative, though of limited
real value: (a) development involves more than agriculture, and
depends on non-agricultural activity, involving the release of
resources and labour from farming per se; (b) sustainable
development is "bottom up", not "top down";
(c) what passes for development assistance is frequently confused
with redistribution from the rich to the poor—and the EU
budget, even with fiscal co-financing, is too small for sensible
re-distribution policies.
(b) Do you consider that it is meeting its
objectives thus far?
Probably meeting political objectives; too soon
to tell whether it is making any real difference.
(c) Is it suitably "strategic" in
nature, meeting the needs of rural society as a whole rather than
being restricted to aiding the agricultural industry?
No—see above.
(d) How well is it being co-ordinated with
other EU and national policies on regional and rural development?
Not at all well, as far as I can see.
6. IS THERE
A CASE
FOR A
HIGHER LEVEL
OF EU FINANCING
OF RURAL
DEVELOPMENT?
(a) Do you have a view on the extension of
compulsory modulation from Pillar 1 (Direct Payments) to Pillar
2 (Rural Development)?
A good idea in principle, since it requires
member states to be more explicit about their objectives and appropriate
instruments.
7. WORLD TRADE
(a) What benefits can the EU's World Trade
Organisation obligations create for EU agriculture and, consequently,
for the EU economy as a whole?
An important added pressure for further internationally
responsible reform of traditional farm policies, and an important
"blame-shift" mechanism for domestic (EU) politicians
to use in making necessary, but initially unpopular reforms. Free(r)
trade is demonstrably one necessary (but not sufficient) condition
for sustainable development.
8. ENVIRONMENTAL
PROTECTION AND
CLIMATE CHANGE
(a) To what extent has the system of cross-compliance
contributed to an improved level of environmental protection?
Too early to say, except in certain very restricted
conditions and circumstances.
(b) How is it linking with other EU policy
requirements such as the Water Framework Directive?
Rather accidentally, so far as I can see, with
exceptions of such initiatives as Nitrate Sensitive Areas.
9. HOW CAN
THE CAP CONTRIBUTE
TO MITIGATION
OF, AND
ADAPTATION TO,
CLIMATE CHANGE?
In its present form, hardly at all, other than
through a (likely spurious) shifting emphasis of commodity support
towards bio-fuels (see below). Rather, the apparent (and superficial)
connection between animal products and food miles with greater
(unsustainable?) carbon footprints could precipitate inappropriate
policy developments with substantial unintended consequences.
(a) What do you consider the role of biofuels
to be in this regard?
Mostly spurious: at present fossil fuel prices,
nearly all bio-fuels make no economic sense. At sensible fossil
fuel and carbon prices, some limited bio-fuel production may make
sense in some circumstances, though on a wide scale must be at
the expense of either forest and natural vegetation carbon sinks,
or world food production potential.
10. FINANCING
The Commissioner has expressed her dissatisfaction
at the financing agreement reached by the Member States at the
December 2005 Council.
(a) Do you consider the current budget to
be sufficient?
For agriculture, more than sufficient; for the
environment and rural development, possibly inadequate, though
there is no solid evidence to decide; for any real redistribution
from the rich to the poor, totally inadequate.
(b) Do you consider co-financing to be a possible
way forward in financing the Common Agricultural Policy?
Definitely.
11. ENLARGEMENT
What has been the impact on the CAP of the 2004
and 2007 enlargements?
Too soon to tell what the effects of the recent
enlargements on the CAP might be, though I am of the firm opinion
that the unification of Germany (preceding and generating the
recent enlargements) was fundamental in changing the political
economy of the CAP reform process.
(a) what is the likely impact of future enlargements
of the EU on the post-2013 CAP?
Increased pressure on the existing CAP, since
the policy needs of the new member states (and some—Mediterranean—members)
are quite different from those of the founding and more developed
members (an argument developed in part B of this submission below).
12. SIMPLIFICATION
OF THE
CAP AND OTHER
ISSUES
How could the CAP be further simplified?
Elimination of all commodity market mechanisms
would constitute a major simplification, offset (potentially,
and already in practice) by increasing complexities associated
with (mostly misguided) attempts to target payments to environmental
and rural development objectives (see below), and with common
rules on different applications of policy, and co-financing, amongst
an increasing number of member states.
(a) In what other ways would you like to see
the Common Agricultural Policy changed in the short and/or the
long term?
No comment, nes.
B: ONE VISION—WHAT STEPS? AN ASSESSMENT
The recent report of the House of Commons Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs Committee on The UK Government's Vision
for the Common Agricultural Policy (HC 546-1) presents a reasoned
and well supported critique of the apparent present position of
the UK government on both the CAP Health Check and EU Budgetary
Review. In concluding my own submission to the HoC Committee (Ev
161), I said:
"We need to reform and develop appropriate
policies to improve the match between those trying to make a living
from and those trying to have a life in the countryside. We need
to remove the existing policies which are not helping and which
are costing more than they deliver. The reforms, however, need
to work with market forces, and not seek to replace or repeal
them. The `vision' presumes that the market will work for food
and farming, but ignores the transition, which in practice is
what much of the policy division is about. It assumes that government
intervention will continue to be necessary for the environment
and rural development, but fails to explore the sorts of intervention
that might work. 60 years ago, policy makers assumed that government
intervention was necessary to secure food supplies and domestic
farming. We are now picking up the pieces of that assumption.
We should be careful that we are not sowing the seeds for yet
another policy rescue problem in the future."
We argue that there are three major policy problems
embedded in the present CAP:[14]
— Engineering and assisting the
transition from a predominantly agrarian to a commercial/industrial
economy—<au0,1>why did (and do) farmers need support?
— Developing appropriate institutions
and mechanisms for the delivery of public (environmental or care)
goods and resolving (internalising) externalities—<au0,1>how
can we ensure a sustainable and socially desirable countryside?
— Designing and implementing (rural)
development policies—<au0,1>how can we foster effective
and sustainable development?
1. Why did (and do) farmers need support?
All developed countries have, until now, found
it politically necessary to support and protect their farmers
in one way or another. A simple explanation of this fact is that
the development process involves fewer people earning a full time
living from farming—people stop farming and do something
else. The economic signals for this structural change are falling
incomes in farming and rising incomes in other sectors of the
economy. These signals reflect the economic forces of development
and result in a falling share of people's total spending being
spent on food, with the inevitable consequence that fewer people
can earn their livings (at levels commensurate with the rest of
the economy) from producing food. Other things being equal, farmers
become relatively poorer during the transition process. In addition,
those who move tend to be those who are better able, or less dedicated
to farming as a way of life. Farming becomes the domain of the
less able, and the most committed.
In democracies, especially, the richer and more
fortunate tend to want their governments to do something for the
less fortunate. This feeling is re-inforced in the case of farming
by both peoples' general beliefs about the importance of farming
and food security, and by their (possibly romantic) understanding
of farming as a (traditional) way of life—after all many
of them have memories of farming and relations still engaged in
the business. Protection and support become `natural' consequences—and
the support mechanisms chosen are the most obvious—support
food prices (without, if possible, compromising the urban poor),
with import duties, export subsidies, deficiency payments etc.
Many economies in transition (with proportions
of populations engaged in farming at or above 25%) find themselves
in exactly this position—with a strong political pressure
to support farming. These member states need some policy which
provides convincing and plausible support to their farmers as
farmers. The present CAP, and its evolutionary trends, does not
easily fit this prescription.
Problem 1: A single common policy for farming
is no longer appropriate for an enlarged and diverse Union
However, history also shows us that traditional
support and protection <au0,1>does not help farmers much
in the longer run. The poorer and smaller farmers do not get much
from commodity related support. The industry as a whole, being
competitive, tends to spend the additional (support) income on
extra inputs, driving up costs and increasing intensity, often
at the expense of the environment, and driving up the value of
land and fixed assets in farming (livestock and machinery etc.)
The first and most obvious difficulty with immediate elimination
of support is that it would bankrupt a substantial fraction of
the present farming businesses, perhaps as many as 50%. These
people have paid prices for the land and capital (live and deadstock)
which presumes a continuation of support. Remove the support and
capital and land values (based on farming) collapse. The present
farmers see their pension funds, and their capacity to weather
commercial difficulties or develop their businesses, evaporate.
They can be expected to make every effort to resist such a prospect—which
provides the current CAP support with its most resilient defence.
Never mind that the most indebted ones would probably survive
quite well—banks are unlikely to foreclose on half or more
of their farming clients when the realisable value of their assets
has just collapsed, so they would take steps to minimise their
losses, often writing off debts and helping existing farmers stay
in business (the New Zealand experience). The farmers who would
really suffer are those without debts, whose wealth would be severely
reduced (the real point of the Defra/Treasury `Vision' observations
on the effects of support).
Problem 2: It is politically impossible, as
well as being morally questionable, to eliminate Pillar 1 quickly
or easily, even in the more developed member states, without some
form of compensation.
The implicit compensation offered in the `Vision'
document is simply continuation of single farm payments and other
support for a finite, limited time (10 or 15 years), presumably
gradually reducing each over this period. This is of little comfort
or help to farmers. They would be better served with a lump sum,
once-and-for-all payment—to protect their investment value
and provide them with the capacity to adjust, either by changing
their business systems or by leaving and letting someone else
do it. Furthermore, they need to know what the new unsupported
market will look like as soon as possible. Gradual change is much
more likely to generate the boiling frog syndrome—drop a
frog into a pot of boiling water and it will jump out; put it
in cold water and bring it slowly to the boil and the frog will
die. Sudden, but reliable change will induce rapid and viable
responses; gradual change is much more likely to produce mal-adaptations
and responses. This is even more likely when there is strong political
resistance to the changes anyway, and every effort being made
to slow them down or reverse them. Even assuming that we could
persuade the EU to agree to elimination in the first place.
Resolution (1) of Problems 1 and 2: Devolve
CAP responsibilities to Member States. Four central facts strongly
suggest a solution to the present European impasse on CAP and
its funding.[15]
Fact 1: The CAP is the only European
policy that is both mandatory and 100% funded from the EU budget.
All other policies are subject to member state contributions.
When the CAP was invented, this made sense, but not now.
Fact 2: Decoupled single farm payments,
with environmental compliance, are a radical change from the traditional
CAP, with much lower social costs and market distortion. Neither
the values of environmental care, nor the costs of providing for
it, are uniform across the Union—there is no logic other
than historical precedent requiring payments to be the same, or
that they be commonly financed. The historical legacy of mandatory
spending, exclusively financed from the EU budget, is no longer
either legitimate or sensible.
Fact 3: The Central European countries,
with large farming populations and low incomes, have joined the
CAP on very unequal terms—their farmers are only paid 25%
of the payment rates to their richer and more fortunate western
cousins, though this proportion is set to rise in the future.
There is neither logic nor justice in this glaring inequity.
Fact 4: The British rebate is only
justified (if at all) on the grounds that Britain contributes
a lot to EU funds (being a large economy), but gets relatively
little back through the CAP (being a densely populated and small
agricultural country). Other, less glaring, budgetary inequities
will persist so long as the EU maintains its present CAP financing
system, which absorbs 40% of an already pitifully small European
budget for the support of farmers.
An answer can be distilled from these facts:
let the EU budget pay only a fraction (say 25%) of the costs of
the current CAP, instead of the present 100%. Make member states
separately responsible for the balance for their own farmers,
as they so wish, up to the budgetary ceiling already agreed. Member
states would then be free to decide whether and how to make these
payments, subject to European and international competition and
trade laws and agreements, and subject to the European freedom
of movement of (farm) labour and capital. If we wanted to provide
limited lump sum compensation, we could. How can France sustain
objection? If she wants to continue the CAP, she can (but at her
own rather than our expense). Some policy competition between
member states would be a good thing—to test different options.
At the very least, such a solution might provide some relief from
the otherwise destructive British political battle about the EU,
giving the UK (and other member states) more discretion and control
over their own local policies, in the true spirit of subsidiarity.
2. How can we ensure a sustainable and socially
desirable countryside?[16]
Pastoralists, however, complain (with some justification)
that the free market (eliminating the traditional CAP entirely)
will not provide the right levels of environmental conservation.
They often argue that biodiversity, landscape quality, and environmental
amenity need government intervention, regulation and support.
Continued single farm payments, or something like them, with cross-compliance
conditions about conserving the environment and natural resource,
seem like a practical and effective way of providing the proper
level of care (conservation, amenity, recreation and environmental)
goods and services.
Problem 3: The free market will fail to provide
sustainable and socially desirable countrysides.
Markets for conservation, amenity, recreation
and environment (care) goods and services fail because
the people responsible for providing them (farmers) cannot get
their necessary reward from the people who are willing to pay
for them (pastoralists). The transaction and negotiation costs
are too high. In addition, many of these countryside care goods
are "public" rather than private—once we have
a pretty landscape or diverse wildlife for one person, it is available
for all, regardless of whether or not they pay for it. We end
up with less care than we are actually prepared to pay for, because
it is in peoples' self-interest to free-ride on other peoples'
contributions. An obvious answer is to force people to pay (through
the tax system) and for government to be responsible for the care
of the countryside.
But this is not a sustainable answer—governments,
especially national (still more multinational—EU) governments
are not competent to mediate or organise the provision of care
goods and services. Care goods and services are inherently
<au0,1>different, depending on the geography and farming
systems, and who wants and provides them. The costs, and ways,
of providing them are widely and deeply heterogeneous, and the
social values are also very different, depending on where they
are and who is providing them. There can be no single market,
nor any single policy menu or framework, which can take care of
them. Furthermore, there is no sound reason to believe that bureaucratic
organisations of disinterested and largely disconnected people,
working according to rigid legislation and necessarily inflexible
rules and protocols, are constitutionally capable of organising
the appropriate production and delivery of these care goods and
services.
Problem 4: Governments will also fail to provide
sustainable and socially desirable countrysides
The essential point of the market failure is
the difficulty of getting the beneficiaries of the countryside
care to put their money where their mouths are, and of getting
these payments, and their associated care requirements and demands,
to the people responsible for managing the countryside (the farmers
and land users). The care markets don't work because the effort
required is not worthwhile. But, as we get richer, so the benefits
of getting care markets to work increase, and they do emerge.
Voluntary contributions to the RSPB, the National Trust and wildlife
trusts pay land users to do the right things with their land.
But there are free riders. There would be more and greater voluntary
contributions if we could each be sure that everyone who valued
the countryside was making their full contribution to its care
and maintenance.
Resolution (2) of Problems 3 and 4: Encourage
and foster Care Markets
We could encourage this by (a) allowing such
voluntary contributions to be deductible (within limits) from
tax bills (rather than simply allowable against tax); (b) making
ex gratia payments from the Treasury to the care trusts
to make good the free-rider shortfall on a pro rata £
for £ basis at some centrally agreed rate. The trusts would
then be responsible for reflecting the demands and requirements
of their members directly to the land users. Variety and diversity
of demands and supplies would be catered for through the diversity
of trusts. If a trust is doing a good job, it will be supported.
If not, its donation flow will dry up. The consumers/users/enjoyers
of the countryside will be directly connected to the people needed
to provide and sustain it.
The alternative of government intervention,
regulation and payments to farmers separates the people willing
to pay from the people who need payment to provide the care by
a maze of procedures, rules, forms and disinterested bystanders
and bureaucrats, which is neither effective nor efficient, and
does nothing to integrate society. It fails for the same reason
that all central planning fails—it is not capable of reflecting
the real diversity of the market and it is too rigid to adapt
and adjust to changing and differing circumstances. It fails because
it fails to address the fundamental problems associated with externalities
and public goods. In the end, it threatens to undermine peoples'
faith in government itself.
On the other hand, especially if pursued within
the framework of a devolved policy as advocated under Resolution
1, member states would be more free to develop and invent different
ways of solving the countryside problems—and more and different
solutions would provide increasing experience of what works and
what does not, helping us all to evolve better and more effective
ways of dealing with the problems.
3. How can we foster effective and sustainable
(rural) development?
A major lesson to be drawn from the collapse
of the Soviet Union is that sustainable development cannot be
generated from the top down—it is not a command and control
process. Development is an evolutionary process, which can be
civilised, and needs to be cultivated and grown from the bottom
up, with as free a flow of goods, services, ideas and investment
as possible. Under-development is fundamentally a result of insufficient
resources (physical, human, social and natural capitals) or inadequate
mobilisation of the available resources to generate sustainable
livelihoods (eg DfID, 1999). Hence, support for health, education,
communications and transport systems are generic recipes for assisting
development, coupled with sound finance, secure and honest government,
all of which promote mobilisation of resources, or (in the case
of education and health) improve the quality and quantity of local
resources. Rural development is, in this sense, no different.
However, history and geography also show us that peripheries and
marginal areas tend to be less developed than the nodes and centres.
In other words, the "spatial" capital of localities
is also important—the less well linked the locality with
other more developed regions, the less development can be expected.
Of course, lack of spatial connection can be ameliorated by better
communication and transportation—though these will generally
be uneconomic and ineffective unless people really want to go
on living in the remote locality, and can persuade others to spend
enough on their products and services to allow them to do so.
If not, attempting to promote peripheral development is pushing
water up hill—it makes no real sense.
However, one of the consequences of traditional
agricultural support has been to increase the value of assets,
and the accumulation of incomes and capital in rural areas. This
has almost certainly spilled over, to a greater or lesser extent,
into the local economies. This augmentation of rural capital has
encouraged and facilitated more general rural development. If
socio-economic development is thought of as cultivation and domestication
of a biological evolutionary system, then agricultural support
(which generally pumps more income than otherwise into rural areas,
at least in the first instance) is like fertilising a natural
ecology (and protecting it from climatic extremes, as a hothouse
does)—some "plants" and associated `animals' will
thrive and prosper, at the expense of others. Farms get bigger
and more "luxuriant", while traditional crafts and livelihoods
cannot compete. Typically, much agricultural support is dissipated
to urban and offshore areas as the agricultural sector increases
its use of purchased inputs and physical capital produced (and
earning incomes) outside the rurality, though needing supply chains,
which may generate some local incomes. However, it also makes
the supported "plants"—the farms—more luxuriant
(in terms of capital value) and more capable of reproduction of
other forms of activity, as well as farming. The ecology (economy)
changes shape to reflect the "cultivation".
Removal, or substantial alteration, in the "cultivation"
practices—by removing the protective glasshouse, and eliminating
(or dramatically altering) the fertiliser regime—will lead
to consequent alterations in the ecological (economic) development
trajectory. In those localities which are rich enough in desirable
and otherwise useful resources, the change will not (probably)
be especially dramatic—the local fauna and flora will adapt
and adjust to the changed circumstances. But in the more remote
and resource-poor areas, the policy reform (or the absence of
suitable policy) could be extensive. The result of the Highland
clearances on the local economies of the Scottish highlands is
an obvious historic example. However, this example also illustrates
the major difficulties of re-creating the traditional patterns
and structures of socio-economic activity—in many ways,
these historic patterns have become unviable.
Problem 5: Rural development is either no
different from non-rural development, or is impossibly difficult.
Changing the CAP to deliver payments for environmental
(care) rather than agricultural production per se will
alter the "socio-economic cultivation" of rural areas
and the agricultural sector in particular. Even if payments for
environmental care substitute exactly for the traditional support,
the incentives and subsequent opportunities for local growth and
development will change substantially, as activities associated
with both the production and consumption/enjoyment of care
goods and services are encouraged at the expense of traditional
agricultural activities. However, there is no reason in principle
(other than defence of vested interest) why environmental payments
should substitute exactly for traditional agricultural support,
either in aggregate or at the farm level. The effects of this
change will depend critically on both the capacity of the locality
to produce care goods and services, and, more importantly,
on the effective demand for these goods and services by the rest
of the population. Those localities which are both capable and
wanted can be expected to grow—otherwise they can be expected
to decline, at least in relative terms.
So, how do we support and assist the declining
areas? Pursuing the cultivation analogy, by using general "fertilisers"
(which improve the "soil" fertility) and risk loosing
those fauna and flora which cannot tolerate richer environments
(often the traditional cultures and practices), and by encouraging
cross-breeding and hybridisation, and other forms of "mutations"
to exploit new niches and develop new capacities—the bottom-up
development processes. While "seeding" new and exotic
varieties and species into these declining areas (the top-down
approach) might work on occasion, it seems likely to be by accident
rather than design, and the successful "invasions" are
likely to happen naturally in any event, providing the local conditions
are appropriate.
Problem 6: Successful and sustainable development
is a process beyond the competence of Government to manage, and
is not amenable to "policy", but only to careful socio-economic
strategy (or "cultivation")
The use of the "cultivation" analogy
needs careful interpretation. Our history as people has depended
on cultivation of specific species at the expense of their natural
cousins and predators—we can and do exploit and encourage
specific "civilised" and "domestic" species
to our own advantage. But what we are talking about here is not
the protection and support of specific species (eg cereals, or
modern agriculture), but the enrichment of the whole "natural"
ecology (socio-economy). The critical difference between natural
evolution and socio-economic evolution is that the former relies
on natural (exogenous) selection; the latter relies on self-selection—we
make the rules about who survives, thrives and prospers and who
deteriorates and declines (or dies). Our rules include social
conventions, economic patronage and investment, personal attributions
and expectations, as well as the complete apparatus of formal
government. We cannot (yet, if ever) manage this process, we can
only manage with it. Development is necessarily holistic and bottom
up—it needs a socio-economic culture and commitment. It
will respond to the socio-economic environment and the political
climate, often in ways, which cannot be predicted (managed), and
in ways which were not intended.
Nevertheless, some policies and government activities
are likely to be more conducive to sensible and sustainable development
than others. We argue above (Resolutions 1and 2) for more appropriate
CAP related policies than we have at present.
Resolution (3) of Problems 5 & 6: Foster
development strategies (not policies), and scale limited EU resources
to favour the less-developed.
However, given that sensible policy will continue
to promote and encourage mobilisation of existing resources (education,
communication, transport etc), at root under-development remains
a consequence of inadequate resources. Either these existing resources
must move to more developed, and development capable regions and
localities, or they must be augmented by re-distribution (explicit
grants-in-aid) from the richer localities. If "rural development"
means developing presently under-developed areas <au0,1>without
requiring or expecting the population to move out, then the only
remaining strategy is to supplement their resources (with fungible
and flexible assets—money). The EU budget, restricted to
less than 1.4% of EU GDP, is clearly far too small to achieve
very much genuine re-distribution. However, it could, with appropriate
reform of the EU finance system (as under Resolution 1 above),
focus these very scarce resources on the less-developed countries
and regions, by scaling the ratios of EU to member state co-financing
to favour the less developed regions.
References
DfID, 1999, Sustainable Livelihoods Guidance Sheets,
Department for International Development, (eg at http://www.livelihoods.org/info/info—guidancesheets.html£1)
Harvey, D R, 2006, The European Budget and the
CAP: an agenda for reform? EuroChoices, 5 (1) Spring, 22 -27.
Harvey, D R, 2003, Agri-environmental relationships
and multi-functionality: further considerations, The World
Economy, 26 (5), 705—725, which examines single farm payments
as a means of providing countryside care, and explains the alternative
of trusts, with appropriate references, Available at: http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/david.harvey/DRHRootFolder/DRH—research.html
17 July 2007
14 Overlaying these fundamental problems are partisan
political issues associated with protecting and defending established
vested interests and dependencies-farmers' organisations defending
their "rights" to support; bureaucracies defending and
seeking to expand their areas of competence (and authority); member
states defending their historic benefits from the EU, and seeking
to establish greater benefits; constituencies arguing for some
or greater government support/protection. Finally, the real political
issues of developing a `Community' or `Political Union' amongst
or from an increasingly large collection of diverse member states
also permeate any discussion of the future of EU policies, and
the politics through which such discussions occur. This assessment
does not deal with these issues. Back
15
These arguments are elaborated in Harvey, 2006. Back
16
These arguments are spelt out in more detail in Harvey, 2003. Back
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