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First Person with Europe's Ag Commissioner

You think newly-appointed USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack has his hands full, wait until you take a look at the agenda for Europe's top farm leader. Mariann Fischer Boel has been European Ag Commissioner since 2004 and leads policy decisions for the Common Agricultural Policy, Europe's version of our Farm Bill. Costing about $70 billion a year, it accounts for 40% of the EU's budget. The EU farming sector employs 5% of the working population. We caught up with her at GreenWeek, Europe's largest food and agricultural exhibition held every year in Berlin, Germany.

FF: Will the global recession cause governments to pass protectionist policies to try to help domestic industries? How would that impact European agriculture?

Fischer Boel: Who would open markets for Europe if we closed our borders and started micromanaging our ag sector? We would have to sell our high quality products only to our own consumers and we couldn't take advantage of emerging markets. That would be damaging to our ag sector.

When politicians try to decide what happens in the ag sector, I look back to 2007. Yields were low in Europe, and what happened? Ukraine immediately closed their exports to Europe. We had ships lined up with Ukraine cereals onboard, and they were told to go back. Ukraine wanted to preserve the production for themselves. That resulted in high feed prices for our pig, dairy and chicken farmers, so we lowered import duties. When the situation stabilized we reintroduced import duties.

FF: The EU pledged to get rid of export subsidies by 2013. Is that still firm?

Fischer Boel: We committed ourselves to phase out by 2013 on the conditions others, such as the U.S. using export credits, would have to deliver as well. The U.S. is still using export credits and we are still within the limits of WTO using the export refunds.

Farm Futures: World Trade Organization talks are stalled. Is it still a high priority for the EU?

Fischer Boel: It was extremely disappointing to see last July that we nearly did manage to get an agreement. It's been more important now with so much uncertainty, that we had a possibility to get an agreement, but I'm not going to repeat why I think it did not happen. I didn't think it was possible being so close to a U.S. election. Now there is an upcoming election in India in April, so maybe we have to wait until after then.

FF: What would trigger the Doha discussions again?

Fischer Boel: It requires political will from the big players. In December (WTO Director) Pascal Lamy tried to put the discussions back on track. Now with the new (U.S.) administration taking office, and the elections in India, that should pave the way. From the European point of view we are interested in contributing.