Small European farmers see ruin ahead

By STEPHEN CASTLE Herald correspondent

LONDON - At their 11ha farm on the Belgian coast, Renaat and Katrien Devreese are staring ruin in the face.

Because 12 of their goats were imported from Wales last month, the couple have been ordered to destroy all 160 of their animals as alarm spreads about Britain's foot-and-mouth outbreak.

Theirs is a small, organic farm producing goat's milk cheese - just the sort of venture which ought to be prospering now.

But a disease that spread rapidly through an intensive system of agriculture has even had an impact on this small outpost.

"It has been 15 years' work to make this business good," says Katrien Devreese.

"If we have to kill the goats that is the end of the line. We would lose the farm; it would be the end of our livelihood."

A personal catastrophe for one farmer is symptomatic of a wholesale crisis for the continent's agriculture, one which could eventually topple the common agricultural policy (CAP), which has played such a crucial role in the development of the European Union.

Britain's foot-and-mouth outbreak comes just as Europe is battling against the effects of the BSE crisis.

With two diseases to combat the central pillars of the 40-year-old CAP are beginning to crumble.

Franz Fischler, the European Commissioner for Agriculture, says Europe is facing "the biggest crisis we have ever had in the agricultural sector."

"If foot-and-mouth disease makes things more difficult than they were with BSE it could be a disaster."

Fischler is prepared to admit publicly for the first time that the aims of the CAP, enshrined in the Treaty of Rome, are "not a good basis for future-oriented agriculture policy."

The CAP was founded in 1962 under an agreement in which German industry came to pay for French agriculture.

Memories of food rationing and wartime hunger were still alive in the minds of millions of Europeans, so the aim was simply to encourage farmers to produce more food.

The objectives were laid down in the treaty: to boost agricultural productivity, secure the "availability of supplies" and provide a "fair standard of living for the agricultural community."

Brussels would finance the policy out of its central budget. A single market was set up, the prices paid to farmers for beef, butter and key crops were to be fixed centrally every year, and they would be guaranteed, regardless of demand.

High tariffs were raised like a drawbridge at Europe's frontiers to keep out cheaper food from the rest of the world.

At the heart of the CAP was the commitment to buy up and store surplus food, which would eventually be released for sale, or more commonly dumped on the Third World.

Initially, the policy worked: food became more plentiful all year round, the EU became self-sufficient in all but tropical fruits, and from the point of view of the most efficient farmers the CAP was a goldmine.

But from the late 1970s the combination of guaranteed prices paid to farmers and "modern" factory methods started to generate food mountains that by the following decade looked obscene.

Worst of all, 80 per cent of the money was ending up in the pockets of the biggest (and richest) 20 per cent of the farmers.

The cost of generous support for 9 million farmers now exceeds a crippling 42 billion euros ($90 billion) a year, nearly half of the bloc's entire budget.

Brussels estimates that the BSE crisis this year will cost the CAP 1 billion euros ($2.1 billion), based on the assumption that the demand for beef across the EU will fall by about 10 per cent.

That would leave a mountain of unwanted beef of around 785 million tonnes.

Yet the actual slump in demand is 28 per cent. A cattle destruction scheme to dispose of 2 million cattle across Europe has had to be extended to include a further 1.2 million cows under a second plan, which allows the storage of tested meat.

Attempts to reform the CAP have been accompanied by howls of protest from the powerful continental farming lobbies.

A world away from CAP politics and back on the Belgian coast, the Devreeses expect to be back in court this week to try to stop the slaughter of their goats.

Any boost for small-scale organic farming may come too late for them, and Mrs Devreese says she is preparing for the worst.

"We are," says Katrien Devreese, "still fighting, not only for ourselves but for other little farmers."

Feature: Foot-and-Mouth Disease epidemic