Food security in the Mediterranean: Euro-Mediterranean countries obviously complementary

Which features and targets in Ipemed’s suggested agricultural food policy could lay the foundations for regional food security?

Trends in the eleven countries that make up the South and East Mediterranean Countries (SEMCs) indicate significant food insecurity, with deficits that could go as high as 50 billion dollars in 2030, endangering public health and social cohesion in these countries. Agriculture and related activities provide a livelihood for at least 72 million people in SEMCs (25% of the total population). Around two million jobs per year would have to be created in these countries between 2010 and 2030, in addition to indispensable absorption of high structural unemployment.

Complementary commercial factors in the Euro-Mediterranean farming and food industries are obvious: the need for cereal and animal products in SEMCs matched with the EU’s production capacity; the need for fruit and vegetables in the EU matched with SEMCs’ production potential. The common food and agricultural policy for SEMCs (CFAPSEMC), proposed by Ipemed, aims to base regional food security on increased agricultural and food production in each Mediterranean country along with Euro-Mediterranean trade partnership, and to contribute to sustainable development in rural zones by organizing territorial food production channels. The CFAPSEMC’s tools are inspired by those of the European CAP. Adapted to local characteristics, they would be implemented in each SEMC as part of a common regional framework.

QUALITY INCENTIVE

The food component of the CFAP-SEMC includes promoting the organoleptic and nutritional qualities of food products existing in the Mediterranean diet; consumer education and information; creating a food security agency; a specific measure giving the poorest inhabitants access to healthy food; setting up a Euro-Mediterranean partnership to supply food products based on multi-year contracts that define price brackets, a system of removal and restitution at borders to keep domestic prices stable, and the creation of strategic stocks.

The agricultural component would include: secure land status for small and mid-size farmers; professional status for farm managers, salaried farmhands and family farmhands, with parity between the sexes; income support for farmers via stable, remunerating farm prices (in particular through border regulation), via aid for inputs and investment (credit and insurance); R&D focused on devising new sustainable systems for farm production and agricultural-support training for farmers and technicians; a measure to control quality and trace farm produce and label-based promotion; support for organizing channels and markets.

The estimated cost of the CFAP-SEMC was around 31 billion dollars per year in the early 2010s, of which 26 billion for a food policy and 5 billion for farming measures, i.e. in total less than 2% of GDP. The CFAP-SEMC (farming component) would generate annual expenditure of 4.6 billion euro, with cofunding split equally between SEMCs and the EU, thanks to redeployed national policies and a specific component
of the EU neighbourhood policy.



Jean-Louis Rastoin, Professor emeritus, President of World Food System UNESCO Chair, Montpellier SupAgro, Ipemed associate expert