The discussion regarding the future of direct support to agriculture, post 2013, has brought about some fairly lively debate so far. 

It was almost inevitable, right from the outset that it would turn into a bun fight between the different farming sectors.  I’m not without blame in this regard; I’ve pitched the odd bun or two myself, in the interest of stimulating debate.

Brian Pack is now fighting our corner in Europe armed with all the bits and pieces that he has gleaned from the various consultations and the feedback from his road show meetings. This can’t do any harm at all as far as keeping Scotland in the loop is concerned but I’m just beginning to wonder if perhaps we have been a bit too quick out of the blocks.

It was only after reading about the approach that the new EU commissioner Dacian Ciolos is taking, regarding future support post 2013, I began to think that perhaps we are getting a bit ahead of ourselves here in Scotland.

Ciolos has had the idea of launching a debate on the future of the CAP and he wants to give everybody the chance to have their say.  Not just farmers, he wants to give every European citizen the time and the right to express their views.

This to my mind is a stroke of pure genius.  Asking the public to make up a wish list will give Mr Ciolos something really concrete to work with in terms of arguing a case for continuing and even increasing support to agriculture.   

Mr Ciolos, I suspect, knows in advance that the result of this consultative process will produce an extremely complex mixture of contradicting thoughts and theories on how the CAP should evolve post 2013 and on towards 2020.  But, by opening up the debate in this way he will eventually be able to speak with great authority on what it is that the public wants.  In the past we have only speculated on what it is we think the public wants from the CAP.  By the end of the year Dacian Ciolos will claim to have first hand knowledge of their expectations.

There will be many, of course, that will not want to take the risk of asking the public what they want.  There will be a real fear of hearing things that doesn’t quite fit in with their own particular beliefs and doctrines.

The production at any cost brigade will not want to hear from people who care about the environment; the environmentalist will not want to hear from those that have concerns about food security; those with concerns regarding food security will not want to hear from the animal welfare groups, and so on. 

These different issues are not too dissimilar to those that Brian Pack has had to try and reconcile with his enquiry.  Brian has had to decide how Scotland’s farmers can deliver these complex expectations within the budget that he has been given. 

Dacian Ciolos on the other hand, at the end of the debate that he has instigated, will hopefully be able to say to the people of Europe here’s what your expectations are and this is how much it will cost you. 

The difference is quite subtle but by actually asking the customer what it is that they want it will give the new commissioner a chance to be a price maker rather than being a price taker.

Having visited Romania on three different trade missions in recent years I found that the people that I met there were quite affable and very astute.  Mr Ciolos will be no exception.

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