European agriculture
Exercises
Read the text European agriculture faces new challenges and find the arguments showing that European agriculture is successfully developing.
As a consequence of the enlargement of the European Union (EU) and the new common agricultural policy (CAP), European agriculture faces a number of practical and political challenges.
An enlargement of EU increased the area and the population by app. 20 per cent. Now there are twenty seven countries in the EU. The total agricultural area increased by 30 per cent, but the increase in the agricultural production lowered.
Agriculture remains an important factor in the EU. The countries differ considerably as regards holding structure, operational methods, and production. On average, the area of an EU farm holding amounts to 18,7 ha but this varies considerably. The trend of the structural development in the EU is everywhere towards fewer and larger holdings. Another characteristic of this period is that holdings have become more specialized.
A significant amount of the food the European people eat comes from EU farms. There are more than 10 million farmers in the EU. This represents 5,4 per cent of all employment. Farming generates many more jobs in surrounding communities and feed and food processing.
As a reaction to the food shortages during and after the Second World War, the EU s common agricultural policy initially encouraged above all the production of plenty of food in order to reach self-sufficiency. Broadly speaking, the more farmers producer the more financial support they received. Over time, this policy created some over-supply at a high cost to the taxpayer and sometimes had the effect of channeling funding to funding to farmers who didnt really need it.
A recognition of this problem coincides with growing worries about whether the CAP was encouraging intensive farming methods which increased risks to food safety. This prompted a reform of the CAP, which is moving away from payments to farmers to support their incomes. The advantage of this approach is that payment can be used as an incentive to farmers to:
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