Globalising Hunger: Food security and the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)

After several rounds of reforms, the European Union’s (EU) Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is once again facing a comprehensive overhaul. By 2013, the current CAP will come to an end, yet the debate over its future has already begun. The discussion over the €57 billion spent on the CAP today – amounting to more than 40 percent of the EU’s budget – takes place against the backdrop of a dramatic worsening of the global food crisis, associated with rising and more volatile food prices.1 For 2010, the number of hungry was estimated at 925 million people, up from 833 million in 2000-2002.2 Although the Common Agricultural Policy strongly influences the state of poverty and food insecurity in the world, its external dimension is barely taken into account in the current debate. This publication aims to contribute to such a reform. It describes the history of the Common Agricultural Policy, its several reforms, its main beneficiaries, its impacts on agriculture, poverty and food security in the Global South, as well as the linkages between the CAP and European trade policy. The publication analyses the impacts of the scramble for the cheapest raw materials, the exports of cereals, dairy and poultry products, as well as the effects of the growing demand for animal feed, by far the most important agricultural commodity imported into the European Union. The final recommendations outline some of the necessary changes the EU should implement so as to enable the CAP to effectively contribute to the eradication of poverty and hunger, as well as the realisation of global food sovereignty.