Spotlight: Which is good for global agriculture development, EU model or U.S. one?

Some experts have claimed the European Union's agriculture model is more market-oriented than the U.S. one, and that's why the EU model can be introduced globally, despite that the model itself needs reforming, they said.

Phil Hogan, EU Commissioner for Agriculture & Rural Development, has underlined that although EU agriculture is protected with some quotas for imports from third countries, internally it became much more market-oriented.

The lifting of milk quotas for dairy producers in the European Union's internal market on March 31, is an example.

Hogan said that, while the U.S. supports its farmers through price subsidies, the EU supports its farmers through direct payments depending on the sizes of the land they have, which means that, with few exceptions, EU farmers could freely choose which to grow.

"In this way, EU agriculture is much more market oriented compared to some other countries," Hogan said.

Anne Krueger, Senior Research Professor at Johns Hopkins University, underlined the need for further liberalization of the international trade in agriculture while reducing the recent protectionist measures.

Krueger said that EU model of producers, rather than price support as in the U.S., is the least market and trade distorting model, and thus could be introduced globally.

However,some analysts agreed that the Common Agriculture Policy is one of the least fundamentally reformed polices of the European Union, which, together with other countries agriculture policy, requires changes.

Jeremy Rifkin, president of The Foundation on Economic Trends, noted that agriculture is "probably one of the most inefficient parts of our economic value chain today", and that "there is an elephant in the room which is climate change," as global warming could modify water cycles of the earth, which would affect harvest and drive up food prices.

According to Rifkin, technology is the rescue, as global agricultural trends will be heavily influenced by on-going Third Industrial Revolution and so-called Internet of thinks, penetrating three major infrastructural areas - IT and communications, transport and energy.

Rifkin emphasize that wide use of IT and communication technologies, sensors and big data will change the way agriculture works while making it more efficient and resilient to environmental impacts.

"We want to be able to move off chemical farming and into organic and ecological farming," Rifkin added. He said that in the next 20 years agriculture shall be liberated from use of chemicals while replacing them completely by ecological fertilizes and plant protection means.

Reform in agriculture sector world-wide is in urgent need to address the risk of food shortage.

Ren Wang, assistant director general of agriculture & consumer protection department at FAO, said that global food consumption is increasing by 2 percent annually, although by 2030 the global water shortage, as well as shortages of land, could make it difficult to produce enough to meet demands.

At the same time, globally nearly one third of food products are thrown away as waste. Endit