G-20 Farm Minister meeting to focus on price volatility

In an open letter sent to EU Farm Commissioner Dacian Ciolos, Patrick Vanden Avenne pointed to the need for Farm Ministers to emphasize the importance of developing efficient and sustainable feed and livestock production, representing the major outlet for vegetable crops and co-products from the food and biofuel industry.

He stated that “Food security should become strategic policy goal both at EU and global level”. “Modern feed and livestock production provides key solutions to effectively deal with price volatility and supply of affordable food products for a growing world population”.

He pointed to FEFAC members’ involvement in a series of public-private partnership seeking to increase sustainability and resource efficiency of livestock and feed at national, EU and international level. The increase of feed efficiency is a key tool to improve performance of livestock production. He welcomed the EU Farm Ministers conclusion at the May Farm Council meeting that access to competitive raw materials is the key for a competitive sustainable development of EU livestock production.

FEFAC, therefore, fully supports any efforts of EU and global regulators to increase market transparency on financial markets as well as on physical commodity markets but strongly advises EU and national government authorities to associate the private sector both regarding exchange on market information on production and stocks as well during the management of crisis situations.

FEFAC calls on the EU Farm Ministers to systematically tackle and review regulatory burden and remove measures which may hamper the fluidity of markets for agricultural raw materials, without compromising feed and food safety standards. These measures raise legal uncertainties leading to lower predictability of agricultural markets, which amplifies normal market price volatility (e.g. the EU GMO policy).