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The publication of the EU’s Farm to Fork strategy this Wednesday is “a last chance” to rebalance the food supply chain, Irish Creamery and Milk Supplier Association (ICMSA) president Pat McCormack has said.
The strategy had to preserve the EU’s family farm system by wrestling back control of the supply chain from retail corporations who wished to maintain a “broken system”, McCormack said.
Farmers faced a challenge “almost beyond comprehension”, needing to produce more food for a growing population, but on a more sustainable basis. McCormack said it would require discarding the traditional ways of increasing supply.
Challenge
Farmers were prepared for the challenge, he stressed, but it would require reversing “the traditional EU approach whereby the delivery of cheap foot at retail level” was considered most important.
The approach had led to “stunning levels of food wasted”, which McCormack said briefing documents estimated at 20%.
The food chain must start with the sustainability of the food and the farming communities who produce it, he said, rather than the retailers who prioritised high standard food at cheap prices.
Reforms
McCormack said: “Reforming our present broken food supply system is like reforming any other seemingly intractable problem: the first step is the vital one. If that first step is wrong, then every step after it brings you further away from the solution.
“The absolutely fundamental question here, and we’ll know the answer tomorrow [Wednesday], is whether the EU’s first step is going to be towards a solution or continuing on the present path that brought us to this cliff edge.
“If tomorrow [Wednesday] we are told that the strategy is going to start from a position that doesn’t see, or want, changes at consumer or retail level, then we’ll know that everyone has wasted their time.
“Farmers will not accept a strategy that simply imposes further restrictions on them alone, the strategy must ensure a proper price for sustainable food and the use of third country imports to undermine sustainable food production must be stopped as part of that strategy,” McCormack concluded.
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